By Jake Fischer, Sports Editor
After the Northeastern baseball team defeated Hofstra 10-2 in Hempstead, N.Y. on Sunday afternoon, the Huskies have now won five of their last six games. Head coach Neil McPhee’s club is now in sixth place in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) with a 6-9 record in conference play, and just 1.5 games behind the Delaware Blue Hens from fourth place in the league.
McPhee’s last campaign in his lengthy tenure as coach of the baseball program got off to a bumpy start. After the Huskies’ previous winning streak, which culminated in a 6-0 win at Rhode Island on April 1, the squad reached .500 for the first time this season. But in between that streak and this recent successful stretch, the Huskies lost three of their 11 subsequent games before rallying in the last weekend of April to win their series at Notre Dame before topping Hartford on April 29.
The Huskies have struggled mightily at the plate. After Michael Foster, the team’s fourth-leading hitter with a .280 batting average, no other Northeastern player is batting over .255 on the season. As a team, Northeastern’s cumulative batting average of .255 is dead last in the conference. In turn, that’s produced the fewest runs in the league and that’s largely due to the fact the Huskies are also the only team in the conference to not have totaled double-digit home runs.
But McPhee’s pitching staff has done its job. The Huskies have the second-lowest team ERA in the conference at 3.03. Senior right-handed pitcher Chris Carmain has led the way for the staff, earning a 5-2 record thanks to his minute 2.01 ERA, the second lowest of any pitcher in the CAA that has made at least 10 starts. Right ahead of Carmain in ERA is junior lefty Isaac Lippert, who boasts a 1.86 ERA but has a 1-3 record thanks to poor run support. Notably, the Huskies have six players that own sub-3.00 ERAs, including freshman righty Dustin Hunt, who’s had a sensational start to his career leading the team in strikeouts (63) and opponent’s batting average (.218) in his 9 starts and 11 appearances.
Against Hofstra, however, the team’s bats came alive. Northeastern averaged 10 runs per game in their 2-1 series win over the Pride last weekend after averaging a paltry 3.86 runs per game prior to trip to Long Island. For comparison, the top team in the CAA, William & Mary, averages 9.04 runs per contest.
With that, things are looking up for the Huskies, who will visit James Madison this weekend in Harrisonburg, Va. The Dukes happen to own a half-game lead over the Huskies in the CAA standings at 6-8. Perhaps Northeastern can leapfrog JMU to keep its hot streak alive.
Photo courtesy of GoNU.com.
