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The Illini baseball team’s pitching woes continued Sunday in a 15-6 home loss to Minnesota. The loss dropped the Illini to 8-10 in the Big Ten despite having won the first game of every series. Coach Dan Hartleb knows that the pitching must improve.

“Yeah I think the offense, its doing a good job… we’ve continued to swing at good pitches, you know, its tough when somebody scores 15 runs it’s tough to score 16 runs in every game and when you look at the last three games our pitching just gave us no opportunity to win,” Hartleb said.

In the four game series against Minnesota, the Illinois pitching staff gave up 53 runs. The situation seems dire but Coach Hartleb says there is still time to turn it around.

“We went to Minnesota last year and did the exact same thing to them and they ended up in the Big Ten tournament and they ended up I think in the championship game, so we still have plenty of time to get into the tournament and to do a good job the rest of the season. But we have to step up and start pitching better,” he said.

The Illini travel to Carbondale to take on in-state rival Southern Illinois tomorrow before returning Big Ten action in Ann Arbor on Friday against conference leader Michigan.