DEKALB – The NIU baseball team (8-20, 4-2 MAC) will head back on the road after four-straight at home to face Buffalo (8-16, 1-2 MAC) for a three-game Mid-American Conference series. The series schedule change to play one game on Saturday at Canisius College and two games on Sunday at Monroe Community College in Rochester, N.Y.
After playing 28 of their 55 scheduled games this season, NIU looks to improve on both their overall and conference records. The Huskies are currently in second place in the MAC West and fourth overall in the MAC behind Ohio (3-0), Central Michigan (3-0) and Kent State (5-1).
Coming off of their first shutout loss of the season on Tuesday to Milwaukee, the Huskies are looking to get their offense back to the form that saw them score 43 runs in their first four conference games. Led by
Jacob Dunham's team-high .355 batting average, NIU is batting .248 on the season.
There has been more power in the NIU offense lately after getting two home runs in the last two series with
Samuel Vega and
Tommy Szczasny leading the team with two each on the season. The Huskies continued to struggle to drive runners in from scoring position, batting .210 after Tuesday's shutout loss.
The NIU rotation will remain the same as last weekend, starting the weekend with
Joe Hawks then following with
Nathan Thomas and
Donovin Sims. Hawks won his third-straight start last Friday going seven shutout innings allowing four hits and striking out five.
Thomas gave up only one run through five innings last Saturday but struggled in the sixth to allow three more to score and give Bowling Green the lead. Sims also had a rough inning in his Saturday start against the Falcons, giving up six runs in the fourth as BGSU led from then on as well.
Buffalo will start three right-handers on the mound in Alec Tuohy, Charlie Sobieraski and Shawn Dubin in the three-game series. Dubin has the best ERA of the three with a 4.96 in 32.2 innings striking out 27 batters and walking 24 for a WHIP of 1.81.
The Bulls' offense is led by infielders Chris Kwitzer and Brian Dudek who tie for the team-lead with two home runs each. Both also have four doubles with Dudek leading Buffalo with three triples. Kwitzer has played in 14 of the team's 24 games but leads the team in batting average at .375 with Dudek appearing in 22 games with a .342 average.
Saturday's game is scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. CT with the Sunday doubleheader slated to begin at 10 a.m. dependent on weather. After this brief trip east, NIU will return home for four-straight against UIC on Tuesday and Kent State over the weekend.
