March 10, 2009

Final Stats

Final Box

St. Louis, Mo. - The Northern Illinois baseball team lost to Saint Louis 13-2 on Tuesday afternoon at The Billiken Sports Center as the SLU (8-4) outhit the Huskies (4-8) by a total of 18 to six and put the game out of reach with a seven-run seventh inning.

"You have to give Saint Louis a lot of credit," said NIU head coach Ed Mathey. They did a good job offensively of spreading the ball all over the ball park and took advantage of some situations that we gave them. Our pitching was okay. We started Dave Reynolds, who was on a pitch count with a series coming up this weekend. In that big seventh we had a couple of non-plays that opened up the doors and they capitalized. They weren't errors, but they just weren't good choices.

"Offensively, we came out on fire. We tried to get aggressive in the first inning, but got caught stealing a couple of times. We had five of the first six batters reach base and we only scored one run. Then their pitcher made some adjustments and we couldn't counter his adjustments, which was a little bit disappointing on our end."

With a 3-1 edge heading into the seventh inning, the Billikens erupted for seven runs to put the game out of reach for NIU and then added three more in the eighth. In the seventh, J.D. Dunn had an RBI triple, Andrew Guerra had a two-run single, Jerry Mancuso had an RBI ground out and Zach Miller capped the rally off with a three-run homer.

Bryant Cotton (2-1) was credited with the win as he went seven innings, allowing just an earned run on five hits and no walks with four strikeouts. In his first start of the season, junior Dave Reynolds (Orland Park, Ill./Sandburg) took the loss (0-1) after giving up three earned runs on 10 hits with a strikeout in 4.2 innings.

Guerra led SLU at the plate with four RBI and a pair of hits as one of six Billikens to get multiple hits. Dunn had three and an RBI while Brock had two and a pair of runs driven in. Miller had two hits and three RBI and Mancuso had three with two RBI. Ben Braaten also added two hits. Freshman Alex Beckmann (Batavia, Ill.Batavia) had a team-high two hits along with a run scored for NIU. Reynolds, junior Jordin Hood (Hawthorn Woods, Ill./Lake Zurich) and sophomore Joe Etcheverry (Bakersfield, Calif./Centennial) each had a hit apiece. Reynolds and sophomore Kevin Smith (Wheaton, Ill./North) also each drove in a run.

The two teams will play again at 3 p.m. CT tomorrow as SLU's probable starter will be righty Zach Outman (0-1, 6.17 ERA, 11.2 IP, 5 BB, 12 SO) while the Huskies' starter has yet to be announced.

Huskie Notes

- NIU has had at least one player record a multi-hit game in all 12 games, led by Jordin Hood and Dave Reynolds, who each have five.

- Jordin Hood has a seven-game hitting streak.

- Dave Reynolds has a career best eight-game hitting streak.

- Kevin Smith drove in his first run of the season with a sacrifice fly in the ninth.

- Tom Barry made his first appearance on the mound this season.