The Illinois baseball team will return to the friendly confines of Illinois Field tonight to open up an eight-game Big Ten home stand starting against Northwestern.

The Illini and the Wildcats will open its four game series at 6 p.m. and will play a double-header starting at 3 p.m. Saturday before concluding the series Sunday at 1 p.m.

“I’m looking forward to coming back in front of the home crowd,” head coach Dan Hartleb said. “We had such a great crowd the first home weekend and the players enjoy playing in front of our fans. It’ll be a big boost for us to be back on our home turf.”

When projections were released for the 2006 Big Ten baseball season, not many so-called experts had the Northwestern Wildcats atop the standings. But after two weekends of Big Ten play that is exactly where they stand.

Despite a 9-18 overall record, the Wildcats have done their damage where it counts. The Wildcats are 6-2 in conference play and took three of four games from Michigan in Ann Arbor to open its Big Ten conference season.

“Northwestern is hot right now,” Hartleb said. “They are one of the best pitching teams in the conference. They throw out four quality starters and are a very aggressive club that plays hard.”

Northwestern is led by sophomore outfielder Antonio Mule and junior starting pitcher Dan Brauer. Both Mule and Brauer have already been honored once this year as Big Ten Player and Pitcher of the Week.

In 27 games this season Mule is batting .388 with two home runs and a team leading 16 RBI’s. Last season, Mule was 6-14 with a home run in a four-game series against the Illini. Brauer is 2-1 with a 3.72 ERA on the season in eight starts. More importantly, though, he is a lefty – something the Illini hitters have struggled with of late.

In all three Illini losses last weekend to Ohio State, in which the Illini scored only one run in each loss, all three starting pitchers for the Buckeyes were left-handed, and all three went the distance.

“We’re not sure why we’re struggling against lefties this year,” sophomore catcher Lars Davis said. “I think it is our mental approach towards the game. We have a lot of lefties in our lineup and typically lefty-lefty you don’t hit very well. I think most of it is our mental approach where we haven’t made adjustments.”

The Illini (15-13, 3-5 Big Ten) enter the weekend having lost seven of its last 10 games, and will send senior starting pitcher Brain Blomquist to the mound tonight in an attempt to break out of the recent slump.

“Every team is going to have their ups and downs,” Blomquist said. “We just have to not get too down on ourselves and come out and work hard in practice and get better. We can only get better from here on out.”

Illinois swept Northwestern last season in the two teams’ four-game series. The Illini averaged nearly 15 runs per game, while holding Northwestern to an average of just over four.

“We’re expecting to come out fighting hard,” Davis said. “Right now we’re 3-5 in the Big Ten and we need to come out and play hard this weekend. Northwestern is going to give us some tough games, but we just have to come out fighting.”