Coming off its first-ever four-game sweep of Ohio State, the Illinois baseball team seemed poised and ready to roll over Western Michigan in a short two-game series before heading up to East Lansing this weekend for a Big Ten series against Michigan State.

But it didn’t work out that way.

Pitching and defense, Illinois’ trademarks all season long, disappeared and the Broncos hit the cover off the ball to win both games in the series, 12-10 and 22-15.

“We threw our mid-week pitching, it wasn’t very effective, but the thing that disappointed me was our defense. I think we made about 15 errors all year, and then we made 13 here in two games,” said Illini head coach Itch Jones.

In the series opener, the Broncos jumped out to an early 2-0 lead in the top of the first. The Illini quickly rallied, and each team traded blows as the score stood 6-6 after three innings.

Then, Illinois sophomore reliever Aaron Saving temporarily quieted the Broncos bats and was pulled in the seventh with a 9-6 lead.

But the pitching staff continued to have trouble, and Western Michigan rallied with three in the seventh and three more in the eighth, winning 12-10.

Senior second baseman J.R. Kyes and outfielders senior Drew Davidson and junior Ryan Rogowski all homered for the Illini, but it was errors by Rogowski and Davidson, as well as senior infielders Toby Gardenhire and Chad Frk, that proved to be the difference.

Jones believes that some of his teams’ errors were a result of how hard the balls were hit off Illinois pitching, but believed that that was no excuse.

The second game of the series wasn’t much better, as Western Michigan jumped out to a 5-0 lead before the Illini ever came to bat.

Junior starter Emanuel Bishop lasted only one-third of an inning, giving up all five runs before senior designated hitter Dusty Bensko was called on to pitch.

He quickly worked out of the inning, then proceeded to put on a power display in the bottom half, hit two home runs – including a grand slam – and drove in seven runs as Illinois put an 11 spot up on the scoreboard.

But the Broncos wouldn’t give up and quickly tied it on three homers in the second. Still tied at 11 in the fourth, the Broncos scored four more runs on three hits and three crucial errors.

In the bottom of the fifth, Davidson hit a two-run homer to tie the game at 15, but Illinois wouldn’t score again. Western Michigan added three in the seventh and four more over the last three innings to salt the game away.

In addition to a season-high nine errors, Illinois was also out hit 23 to 12 in the game. Bensko finished 2-for-4 with 7 RBIs but was held hitless for the last eight innings.

Jones said he plans to start junior Brian Blomquist at Michigan State on Friday. Blomquist is coming off a complete game win over Ohio State last weekend and, along with senior Jim Conroy, has become one of Illinois’ aces.

Jones hopes that his team’s defense will be back for the game, because he knows how much the team’s success rides on it.

“The mistakes we made, the things that we did wrong we’ve worked on,” he said. “Everything that happened we’ve worked on, we just mentally did not execute.”