UMAC Game of the Week: Northwestern at Martin Luther - Baseball
UMAC Game of the Week Archives
ST. PAUL -- The Upper Midwest Athletic Conference (UMAC) Game of the Week is a feature that takes place each week throughout the conference portion of the season with one contest being selected and highlighted as the UMAC Game of the Week.
The week's UMAC Game of the Week will take place on Saturday, April 27 as Northwestern will travel to New Ulm to face Martin Luther in UMAC Baseball action. Due to inclement weather this spring, both teams have only completed two conference contests as they head into the weekend.
The games will feature the currently 2-0 Knights against the 0-2 Eagles as both teams look for wins this weekend to improve their conference standings.
About the Eagles
Northwestern will play just its fifth and sixth UMAC games on Saturday when the Eagles face Martin Luther in New Ulm, Minn. The Eagles have only two conference games behind them heading into this weekend (Northwestern will play a doubleheader against Minnesota Morris on Friday afternoon), having lost both of their league contests against the College of St. Scholastica on April 5. Northwestern hasn’t played any game – conference or nonconference -- since that first Friday in April.
In 17 games this year, Northwestern is 5-12 overall. Senior Cody Durkee is having NWC’s best performance at the plate so far this year with a .310 batting average and a team-leading 18 hits with eight RBI, another Eagles-best statistic. The second baseman typically has batted second in head coach Dave Hieb’s lineup. Another senior, Zach Markwith, needs just four hits to take over second place on Northwestern’s career hits chart. The outfielder/pitcher has 17 hits this year and 168 over the course of his four years.
Josh Balzer will most likely start in one of Saturday’s games and will be looking for his first win of the season in doing so. Balzer has a 4.41 ERA in 2013, allowing 17 earned runs in 34 and two-thirds innings pitched. Who will pitch the second game of the doubleheader is a question mark that could be answered with the name of Bryan McCallum or someone else in the Eagles’ long, yet young list of relief help. McCallum is a hard thrower who has also been hit hard in his six innings of work. Northwestern’s ace, Andy Peterson, and Markwith will most likely pitch the day before in Morris, Minn.
About the Knights
The Knights are coming off a layoff of nearly three weeks, with the last games being played on April 7 when the Knights swept a double header against North Central. They currently sit at 6-4 overall and 2-0 in UMAC play heading into the weekend.
MLC’s strength in the early season has been its pitching staff. The Knights lead the UMAC in team ERA at 3.48, and also in strikeouts per game at 9.0. They feature four strong starters, led by returners Jake Ziel and Andrew Nemmers, with first-year Matt Olson and senior Joe Janke (returning after missing last season) rounding out the rotation.
At the plate, Ziel has led MLC in batting average at .367, while Nemmers and junior Aaron Stokke also have batting averages above .300. Nemmers is also tied for the team lead with three extra base hits, a mark equaled by outfielder Will Jensen, who won Player of the Week honors after smashing three doubles in the double header against North Central in his first two games of the season. First baseman Galen Holzhueter and first year outfielder Dillon Rannow have each played in all ten games for the Knights.
Game notes
- MLC finished its Florida trip with a record of 4-4, its best record in program history on the preseason Florida trip. The previous high was three wins in 2005.
- Northwestern went 5-0 against the Knights last year, with two of those games taking place in a nonconference format during the Eagles’ and Martin Luther’s spring break in Florida.
- NWC’s last loss against the Knights came on April 22, 2010. Since that date, Northwestern is 9-0 versus Martin Luther.
- The Eagles hold a 39-24 all-time advantage over Saturday’s host.
Martin Luther recap |
Northwestern recap |
#UMACgotw Final Scores: NWC 11, MLC 7; NWC 9, MLC 6
For information on other contests around the league this week, visit the UMAC
live scoreboard.