April 3, 2010

Final Stats

Final Box

DeKALB, Ill. - It had to happen sometime, as the Northern Illinois baseball team lost its first ever game to Buffalo, 3-2, Saturday at Ralph McKinzie Field on a mild, sunny and breezy afternoon of Mid-American Conference action. The loss for NIU (9-16, 3-2 MAC) was just its first in 17 total games against the Bulls (12-11, 2-3 MAC).

In a contest that featured no multi-run innings, the Huskies took their only lead of the day in the third on a two-out tailing double to left-center field off the bat of Alex Beckmann, scoring Alex Jones after he reached in the previous at-bat on an infield single to third base that took a big unexpected hop.

However, the Bulls quickly answered with a run in each of the next two frames to claim a 2-1 lead. In the fourth, a leadoff walk came around to score without a hit as a wild pitch moved the runner to second, dropped third strike to third, and a grounder to short stop Alex Jones brought the run home. In the fifth, a leadoff single turned into a tally after another wild pitch, steal, and a single up the middle.

NIU then rallied to tie it, 2-2, in the sixth following a Jordin Hood hit-by-pitch, Dave Reynolds single through the right side and Troy White walk that loaded the bases for Joe Etcheverry. But the lefty hit into a 4-6-3 double play and Jake Hermsen struck out swinging in the next play to end the rally, leaving the Huskies with just one run from a promising start to the frame.

"That was a big point in the game," said NIU head baseball coach Ed Mathey. "I have to give them credit. They rolled up a double play there and that's a pitcher's best friend. It was not more apparent than there. We had Joe Etcheverry up and he's normally a guy who gets the ball elevated. He didn't do it there, but another foot to the right and that ball is through. That really cut down our rally and it would have been nice to have more runs there.

"Other than that, we just didn't have a lot of great opportunities, but that's baseball sometimes. We have to come back tomorrow and get this series."

With the momentum shift, UB took advantage to push the winning run across in its next at-bat as a one-out double and steal of third base allowed the run to score after a two-out infield single to first base, in which the ball took a bad high-hop on Reynolds.

In the final three innings, the Huskies were only able to get one runner on base, an Etcheverry walk in the ninth with one out, but he was erased on Hermsen's 4-3 double play that gave Brian Pullyblank his first save of the season after the hitless three frames of work with a strikeout.

UB starter Pierre Miville-Deschenes (3-3) earned the win by throwing six innings, allowing two runs on five hits and two walks with four strikeouts.

Huskie starter Jeremy Gonzales (2-1) followed Chuck Lukanen's complete game yesterday by going the distance, as well, but wasn't lucky enough to get the win as he was given his first loss. The teammates are the first since Trevor Feeney and Adam Holdenrid to put together back-to-back complete game efforts as the former Huskies both did it against Buffalo, too, respectively, in a doubleheader sweep on March, 22 two years ago. Gonzales' season-long outing resulted in three runs on six hits and two walks with a season-best tying eight strikeouts.

"Jeremy gave us a chance to win today," Mathey said. "He battled through some tough innings and did a nice job. Skonieczki is a tough hitter. He's normally their leadoff guy, but they moved him down to the sixth spot to try to change the flavor of what was going on and it paid off. He got some hits and he's a feisty guy on the bases. He has speed and it played out well for them today.

"Jeremy threw the ball really well. He only had two walks but one was a leadoff and it came around to score on him. But the way he scattered the hits and pitched in situations gave us a chance to win."

Jones and Reynolds paced the offense with two hits apiece.

The teams will close the three-game series tomorrow with the rubber match at 1:05 p.m. CDT.