TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – The NIU baseball team (10-26, 6-6 MAC) lost their mid-week game to Indiana State (18-15, 4-2 MVC) 17-8 Tuesday afternoon. Dane Tofteland of the Sycamores hit three home runs on the day, two grand slams and a three-run shot.
"We gave up too many big innings today," Head Coach
Mike Kunigonis said. "We did a great job of battling and fighting to stay in it but we just made too many mistakes to overcome them."
After trailing 4-0 after the second inning, the Huskies went on to score six runs in the fourth to take a 6-4 lead.
After starting the inning by making back-to-back outs, NIU started a two-out rally as
Roderick Bynum singled,
Luke Yapp and
Jason Gasser walked,
Samuel Vega cracked a two-RBI double to left,
Jesus Tovar III knocked a two-RBI single to center to tie the game.
Tommy Szczasny was hit by a pitch,
Jacob Dunham walked then finally
Joe Jumonville singled to center to score two runs with Dunham getting thrown out at third to end the inning.
Two innings later, the Sycamores scored seven runs to take a 12-6 lead behind Tofteland's second home run of the game and first grand slam. Tofteland's second grand slam and third home run came in the seventh inning to push the lead to 17-6.
NIU ended up scoring one run in each the eighth and ninth innings to have the game final score end in 17-8. All but two Huskie starting position players recorded a hit on Tuesday with four different NIU hitters having two-hit days.
"We need to learn from every inning we play and get better from the good stuff and the not so good stuff," Kunigonis said. "We will have a good day of practice tomorrow to work on the fundamentals of the game before this weekend."
The Huskies will remain in non-conference play this weekend has they will head to Evansville for a three-game series starting Friday. HuskieBall fans can follow the team on Twitter @NIU_Baseball and on Instagram @niu_baseball.
