Baseball | May 20

AVON, Ohio - The Northern Illinois University baseball team had four student-athletes selected to the Mid-American Conference's postseason All-MAC teams on Wednesday, as the conference announced its postseason award winners.

This is the first time since 2011 the Huskies have had four All-MAC selections. Senior pitcher Max Vaisvila (Villa Park, Ill./Wabash Valley College) was named to the First Team as second baseman Cole Smith (Dubuque, Iowa/Bradley) and designated hitter Caden Robertson (Magnolia, Texas/Central Oklahoma) were Second Team selections. Junior pitcher Danny Cihocki (Princeton, Ill./Lake Land College) was named to the All-Defensive Team.

Vaisvila is NIU's first All-MAC First Team selection since 2013 when pitcher Eli Anderson and infielder Alex Klonowski earned the honor. The senior led the Huskies in the regular season with 73 strikeouts and 75.0 innings pitched, while tying Blake Gaskey (Davenport, Iowa/Ohio) for the team lead in wins with seven. Vaisvila was second in the MAC with a 3.36 earned run average and a 4.06 strikeout-to-walk ratio. NIU went 12-1 in Vaisvila's starts this season.

"I'm so proud of Max for the way he has bounced back from a pretty tough season last year," said head coach Ryan Copeland. "He kept working and completely changed his arsenal as a pitcher. It's been fun to watch him take the ball every weekend."

On March 28, Vaisvila threw NIU's first complete game, one-hit shutout in a 5-0 win over Bowling Green. He struck out 14 batters, the second-most strikeouts in a single game in NIU history while taking a no-hitter into the seventh inning. Vaisvila was named the MAC Co-Pitcher of the Week as well as the National Pitcher of the Week by both the College Baseball Foundation and the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association. He was also named to Baseball America's Team of the Week. On April 22 Vaisvila was named a semifinalist for the National Pitcher of the Year award.

Robertson leads the Huskies with 14 home runs and 55 runs batted in, which puts him in the top-five in the MAC in both categories. He hit a home run in seven straight games from March 1-March 15. On March 9 Robertson was named the MAC Player of the Week after hitting .438 in NIU's series win at Ohio. He hit four home runs against the Bobcats while adding a double, a triple and 11 RBI. Robertson drove in a season-high five runs in the Huskies' 15-9 win over Eastern Michigan.

Smith is second on the team with a .359 batting average while leading NIU with 16 doubles and a .559 slugging percentage. He enters the MAC Tournament having had a hit in 18 of the last 19 games. Smith had a 10-game hitting streak from March 29-April 28, punctuated by a three-RBI game in NIU's 11-5 win over Valparaiso. He has had multiple hits in 19 of 42 games played this season. Smith was named to D1Baseball's Top-50 Second Basemen list on May 6th.

"We felt very fortunate to land both Cole and Caden during the recruiting process last summer," Copeland said. "Both of them have been instrumental to our success this year."

Cihocki's selection to the All-Defensive Team highlights the improvement NIU has made defensively this season. The Huskies went from a .964 fielding percentage in 2025 to a .978 mark this year, the second-best in the MAC this year and the second-highest fielding percentage in program history. Cihocki had 10 assists in the field in his 14 starts. He was named the MAC Co-Pitcher of the Week on Feb. 23 after holding Presbyterian to one run on four hits, striking out a career-high 10 batters in NIU's 3-1 win. Cihocki won four consecutive starts from April 18-May 8, capped by holding Ball State to two runs over 7.2 innings in a 5-2 Huskies' victory.

"We take a lot of pride in controlling the running game, as well as our pitching staff being able to contribute defensively," said Copeland. "Danny has done both of those at an extremely high level this season."

NIU enters the MAC Tournament on Wednesday with a 31-17 record, marking a 10-win improvement from 2025 and the Huskies' first 30-win season since 2011. The Huskies went 21-12 in the league, a program-record for conference wins. NIU takes on a familiar foe in its first game of the MAC Tournament Wednesday night in Western Michigan. The Broncos and Huskies wrapped up the regular season with a three-game series in Kalamazoo last week which Western Michigan swept. First pitch at ForeFront Field in Avon, Ohio on Wednesday is set for 5 p.m. CT, with all games of the tournament televised on ESPN+.

—NIU—