Head coach Dan Hartleb doesn’t need to analyze trends to figure out why Illinois baseball has lost three of its first four weekends on the road. He knows what happened, and he isn’t making excuses.

It’s not that the competition is too tough. He believes his team can compete with any team in the country. Youth may factor in, but it’s not the main issue, either. And asking him about further pregame scouting will yield the same answer — he never has over-analyzed an opposing team and never will. The most important trend to him is the one his team is trying to correct.

“If you look at our entire team, it’s just consistency,” Hartleb said. “It’s having those consistent games, having those consistent bats and not letting failure affect you.”

After the Illini offense opened the season with 29 runs in three games, it managed just five runs the next weekend.

Meanwhile, the Illini pitchers worked opposite their offense, dropping their earned runs allowed from 27 to 7 in the second week. They also lowered the numbers of hits and walks.

It wasn’t until the third weekend, where Illinois swept Florida and Florida Gulf Coast in four games, that both pitching and hitting stayed consistent. The Illini bats cranked 42 hits and 23 runs on the weekend, which took enough pressure off the pitchers and allowed them to hold the two teams to 23 hits and four runs.

This start to the season (6-7) is most similar to its 16-game road stretch in 2011, when it returned home at 6-10. That year, the Illini scored six or more runs in each of their wins while the pitching staff held opposing offenses to four or fewer runs in five of those six wins. Inconsistency in the other 10 games, however, resulted in losses.

“You just need everyone firing on all cylinders,” pitcher John Kravetz said.

The 2011 Illini squad also reinforced that youth has little correlation to rough starts. It might be easy to point to last year’s 13-4 start and blame this year’s struggles on the loss of five position players in the offseason; however, 2011’s squad started mostly upperclassmen and was inconsistent.

To Hartleb, consistency is a mind set. He believes the Illini need to bring the same level of effort every week for them to start proving their value as a team, which is part of what makes season-opening road stretches so important.

RPI for the NCAA tournament factors in every game, including midweek games against in-state clubs such as Illinois State and Eastern Illinois.

These midweek matchups have also been known to stump the Illini. In 2011, Illinois rebounded from its poor start and pushed its record to 30-27 overall. And yet, they were 2-5 in midweek games.

“I think what happens sometimes in midweek games is when you don’t have good pitching depth, it affects those games greatly, and I know that’s what’s happened to us in the past,” Hartleb said.

Leadoff hitter Will Krug isn’t making excuses, either. He knows constant effort is the only trend that matters to his team’s success.

“After the first week, I feel like everything is the same,” Krug said. “I think once everything gets clicking, it’ll be very important for us.”

Hartleb has said it since the preseason: The only thing Illinois can control is itself, and that’s where the focus will remain — on bringing the same effort every game.

“We need to have a mentality where people have to stop us,” Hartleb said. “And if people are trying to stop us, then we’re only worried about our club, and that’s the mentality I want the guys to have.”

J.J. can be reached at [email protected] and @Wilsonable07.