By Jimmy Brooks, News Staff
The story of the Northeastern baseball team can’t be told without one word – potential. After all, “potential” was the unofficial theme of the team that finished 18-33, clearly the most collectively uttered word by all of the players on the squad.
After finishing the year on a three-game losing streak, during which the squad was swept by then-Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) first-place team James Madison, the Huskies managed to improve their overall win tally by a margin of five games, their highest since 2009.
After starting 5-21, the Huskies went 13-12 down the stretch – this was the potential that so many players spoke of.
Still, as head coach Neil McPhee has said, a team is only as good as its record shows. While the 2011 Huskies certainly may have had the “potential” to crack .500, they simply didn’t get the job done.
Despite a season that was hard to accept, sophomore outfielder Alan Pastrynak and junior co-captain Matt Miller both said after a disastrous first-half start, things improved greatly in the second half of the year.
Regardless of their record, the squad has undoubtedly gone downhill since 2009, when the team went a respectable 28-25.
“We have a long history of success,” said McPhee, who finished his 26th season as skipper. “The last two years have been the down years of the program. Naturally, the losses are disappointing in the ultimate.”
The Huskies’ demise over the last few years was almost inevitable, as slashes in funding and the amount of scholarships available to the team has plummeted.
The allowable number of scholarships in CAA baseball is 11.7. In 2006, because of budget cuts, the Husky team dropped their scholarship number from eight to six, giving the coaching staff little room to make significant recruiting moves.
Subsequently, from 2007 to 2009, the Huskies had very little room to recruit. While the Huskies did figuratively strike gold with the 2011 seniors, they needed more firepower offensively and defensively if they were to succeed in the conference this year.
The Huskies lose just those four seniors, an unusually small number for a team. Yet, those seniors’ impacts should not be underestimated. Each made huge contributions in their last year on the squad. Without them, the Huskies would likely have finished last in the CAA.
Miller had nothing but positive comments about his four seniors, including co-captain Les Williams, who led the squad in wins (five), strikeouts (77), and complete games (two).
“My co-captain Les, that’s going to be a huge loss,” Miller said. “Not only what he brings to the field, but his locker room presence is unbelievable.”
Senior Brandon McNelis put up solid numbers of his own this season, finishing second on the team in strikeouts, just one behind Williams. Senior Jeff Dunlap finished second on the team in homeruns, RBI, and walks. J.T. Ross was a valuable member of the Husky rotation, logging the third most innings pitched, behind Williams and rising junior Drew Leenhouts.
Miller said that all graduating Huskies will be missed. Yet, despite the loss, 2012’s team will grow in leaps and bounds by nature of number. A team that went from having just four seniors on its 30-man squad will now have six seniors. The next year (2013), a whopping 13 players will be seniors.
When you combine that with a recently-dropped football team which could potentially provide the baseball team with more funds, it’s easy to understand why things are looking up for the team.
Next year’s incoming class has 10 players coming in, with seven players on some form of scholarship.
This fact is probably more important, in the long run, than any win the Huskies registered this year. Scholarships, and where they go, are major determinants of how successful a college athletic program will be. So, while Northeastern has arguably held it’s own with hardly any scholarships over the last few years, it will be getting an opportunity to raise its program to the next level.
Perhaps one of the Huskies’ biggest asset of all is freshman Aaron Barbosa, who hit .335, the second-best average on the team. But Barbosa’s biggest weapon is his speed. In his rookie campaign, he set the all-time NU record and led the league with 29 stolen bases.
