Baseball | April 16

DeKALB, IL – The Northern Illinois University baseball team hosts the Akron Zips for a three-game Mid-American Conference series starting Thursday, April 17 at 3 p.m. at Ralph McKinzie Field at Walt and Janice Owens Park.
 
NIU (13-22, 3-12 MAC) scored a school record 27 runs on Tuesday in a 27-11, seven-inning win at Northwestern. The previous record of 22 runs was set twice in the 2000 season and stood for 25 years. NIU also drew a team record 17 walks in the win over the Wildcats. All nine batters in the NIU lineup reached base at least three times. The Huskies are 7-3 this season when scoring at least 10 runs in a game. NIU enters the weekend second in the MAC in scoring, averaging 8.1 runs per game.
 
Senior outfielder CJ Cepicky (St. Louis, Mo./Missouri) tied the NIU single-game RBI record on Tuesday with eight. He did it by becoming the first NIU baseball player to hit two grand slams in the same game. Cepicky's first slam in the second inning put NIU up 5-1, with his second slam in the seventh putting the exclamation point on the Huskies' 27-run outburst. He is the first Huskie to have eight RBI in a game since Alex Jones on May 14, 2009 at Western Michigan.
 
The Huskies are closing in on the single-season home run record with a month to go in the regular season. With three home runs on Tuesday, NIU has hit 57 on the year which is the second-most in a single season in program history. In 2003 the Huskies hit 70 home runs to break the previous record of 46 set the year prior.
 
Junior Logan Gregorio (Naperville, Ill./Benedictine) hit his 14^th home run of the season on Tuesday and had five RBI in the game, extending his current hitting streak to 13 games. Gregorio is hitting .333 in that stretch with seven home runs and 25 RBI. His 14 home runs this season are the third-most in a single year in program history. Gregorio is two home runs away from passing Mike Santoro's 15 home runs in 2003 for second on the single-season home run list. Colin Summerhill broke the single-season home run record last year with 19. He is second in the MAC with 14 home runs which puts him 16^th in the nation. Gregorio also leads the MAC with 51 RBI and is one of 18 players in the country to have at least 50 RBI.
 
Akron (10-25, 4-14 MAC) went 1-2 against Central Michigan last weekend, winning on April 13 7-6. Sophomore outfielder Evan Bottone leads Akron with a .317 batting average and 11 stolen bases. Junior pitcher Jared Schaeffer has struck out 46 batters in 53.2 innings pitched. NIU won two out of three games at Akron last season.
 
The Huskies play road games at Valparaiso and Illinois State next week before hosting Western Michigan April 25-27.
 
--NIU--