Illini baseball travels to Northwestern

Illinois’ Reid Roper (7) bumps helmets with Jason Goldstein (34) after Goldstein hit a home run during a game against Indiana State at Illinois Field on March 18. It was Goldstein’s first career home run for the Illini in a game they won 8-0.

After playing its last nine games at home, the Illinois baseball team will be back on the road this weekend, but that doesn’t seem to bother the Illini.

Illinois (14-11, 2-1 Big Ten) will play its first Big Ten road series against Northwestern (4-19, 1-4) starting on Friday. Despite the fact that Illinois has had recent success at home, winning seven of its last nine home games, sophomore catcher Jason Goldstein said the Illini are happy to go on the road.

“It’s always nice to be on the road,” Goldstein said. “Even though it’s awesome being at home, when you go on the road you get to build points for RPI. When you lose to a bad team at home it kills your RPI, when you beat bad teams on the road it boosts your RPI. We’re just looking forward to going in there getting a sweep and hopefully coming out better.”

Another reason for the Illini’s enthusiasm could be the play of the team’s opponent. Illinois has dominated Northwestern as of late, winning seven of the last nine meetings between the teams. The Illini also lead the all-time series against the Wildcats 163-87.

Despite both the recent and historical success, head coach Dan Hartleb said Illinois isn’t taking Northwestern lightly.

Get The Daily Illini in your inbox!

  • Catch the latest on University of Illinois news, sports, and more. Delivered every weekday.
  • Stay up to date on all things Illini sports. Delivered every Monday.
Thank you for subscribing!

“The thing that I always expect out of Northwestern is the fact that they play very, very hard,” Hartleb said. “It’s a hard-nosed club. Their head coach Paul Stevens has got energy. I think they feed off of him. It’s never a gimme weekend. You have to go out and really play hard. You have to be very fundamentally sound, and they usually throw very good arms at you, so we’ve got our work cut out for us on the weekend.”

After postponing the midweek game against Missouri at Busch Stadium, Illinois used Wednesday to fine tune an offensive aspect the team has been working on throughout the year in order to prepare for the weekend.

“We’ll continue to work on situational hitting and we need to get some of the pitchers that we planned on throwing today on the mound to make sure that they’re sharp for the weekend,” Hartleb said.

For the Illini to have success, the team will need to exploit Northwestern’s below-average pitching staff with its above-average offense. Illinois’ offense will look to take advantage of a Northwestern pitching staff that currently ranks 10th in the conference with a 5.34 ERA and a .294 opposing batting average. The Illini rank third in the Big Ten in batting average (.277). 

On the other side of the ball, Illinois will need to control Matt Hopfner and Cody Stevens, Northwestern’s two offensive leaders. Hopfner leads the team in batting average and hits, and is tied for the team lead in RBI’s. He also leads the Wildcats with a .500 batting average in Big Ten play.

Junior John Kravetz said the key to the pitching staff’s success will be to “continue to do the things we’ve been doing.”

“Our pitching has really stepped up since the first weekend,” Kravetz said. “Throw a lot of strikes. Keep pitches down in the zone and we’ll be successful.”

Nicholas can be reached at [email protected] and @IlliniSportsGuy.