CLINTON, S.C. - The Northern Illinois University baseball team struck out 13 Presbyterian Blue Hose batters Saturday in a 3-1 win at Elton Pollock Field at the PC Baseball Complex in the second game of the One Spartanburg Inc. Baseball Classic.

"That's the name of the game in all levels of baseball now, but especially professionally and in college," said head coach Ryan Copeland. "If you can't get swing and miss, it's just going to be really tough to go win a bunch of games. Coach [Calvin] Peacock and the pitching staff train for this. We feel good about our defense, and they've been excellent so far, but anytime you can eliminate opportunities for things to go wrong it's a good thing."

Starting Pitcher Danny Cihocki (Princeton, Ill./Lake Land College) threw a career-high seven innings of one-run ball for the win, his first of the season. He struck out a career-high 10 batters and only allowed one Blue Hose batter to get in scoring position after the second inning. Josh Loren (North Liberty, Iowa/Kirkwood CC) had a strikeout in 1.1 innings of relief and Matt Tarr (North Aurora, Ill./Purdue) got the final two outs of the game on strikeouts for his first save.

NIU (3-3) scored first for the fourth time in six games to start the year. Cole Smith (Dubuque, Iowa/Bradley) hit a triple in the top of the first. Gavin Baldwin (Nashville, Ill./SEMO) drove Smith in on a ground out to put the Huskies up 1-0. Cihocki struck out the side in the first while allowing a hit to Amman Dewberry.

Presbyterian (2-5) tied the game 1-1 in the bottom of the second inning. Cihocki hit Bo Moody with a pitch, then allowed a single to Brody Linker that allowed Moody to get to third. After a strikeout, a wild pitch allowed Moody to score. The Huskies took back the lead in the top of the  fourth. Marcus Romero (Brighton, Colo./South Mountain College) hit a double to left field with one out. Caden Robertson (Magnolia, Texas/Central Oklahoma) drove in Romero with a single to left center to give NIU a 2-1 lead.

Cihocki retired the side in order in the bottom of the fourth and the fifth. The Blue Hose had a chance to tie the game in the sixth as Dewberry reached on a single to left and stole second base with one out. Cihocki struck out Emory Guilford but walked Matthew Rollison. He got Moody to fly out to end the threat. Cihocki got two more punchouts in the seventh to give him 10 on the day.

"Danny was excellent tonight," Copeland said. "We really needed him to step up after getting a pretty short start yesterday. He had all his pitches working, landed some breaking balls in some hitters counts and gave us a really good effort."

The Huskies tacked on an insurance run in the eighth. With runners at first and third and one away, Owen Ross (Yorkville, Ill./USC Upstate) reached on an infield single that scored Dahlberg and made the score 3-1. Loren made that lead hold up with a perfect eighth inning. Presbyterian got the tying runs on base in the ninth when Loren hit two batters. Tarr then entered the game and struck out Linker for the second out. He walked Caden Mason to load the bases but got Cam Mallo to strike out to end the game.

Smith and Robertson both went 2-for-4 at the plate on Saturday. Smith has nine hits in the first six games of the season.

Dewberry had two of the four hits for Presbyterian. Christian Charalambous allowed two runs on five hits in 4.1 innings on the mound.

The Huskies wrap up the One Spartanburg Inc. Baseball Classic at Wofford on Sunday. First Pitch is at 12 p.m. CT.

—NIU—