Michigan State baseball gets series win over Northwestern

In the rubber match of the series against Northwestern, Michigan State baseball would get a very important 3-1 win at home to win the series this past weekend. This was a very important series as this team is one that is fighting for a spot in the Big Ten Tournament and was coming in losing four straight games.

The team needed to win the series to stay in a position to currently be in the Big Ten Tournament and a heartbreaking loss in Game 1 put its back against the wall. Not only did the Spartans fight their way off that wall, they won the series while showing that fight in Game 3.

Game 3 was a game full of opportunities for both teams but key pitches and defensive players kept things scoreless through the first five innings. Through the first five innings, Michigan State starting pitcher Nolan Higgins, while he had some issues in the first, was confidently making his pitches that put his team in great spots. With Higgins at the mound, Michigan State had several opportunities to score runs in the bottom of the inning but like Northwestern, could never get the run across home plate.

This all changed in the sixth inning. For the first time in the game, Northwestern was finally able to get a runner across the plate after a hard hit ground ball to Ryan McKay. While there was the chance to go home, a bobble of the ball allowed the run to score and put Northwestern up 1-0.

At this point in the game, it really seemed like whoever scored the first run of the game would win. This was not the case. The next inning, JT Sokolove started with a double, and then McKay responded with another double to tie the game. The hitting would not stop as Sam Busch and then Parker Picot would add two more runs to put Michigan State baseball up for good. After that point, Garrett Brewer would come in and shut the door for an eventual 3-1 win for the Spartans.

After the game, head coach Jake Boss talked about the win.

“Yeah, really proud of our guys,” Boss said. “After playing how poorly we played on Friday, for them to come back and win the series speaks to their character.”

This was a massive win and the idea of responding after the Friday game is one that really shows what this team can do. For this team, it’s all about consistency and doing what they are capable of. These are some of the things that Boss also addressed after the game and how it was motivating to see how the team responded after not winning a game they should have won on Friday.

Not only did Boss talk after the game, but Busch also talked about the confidence of this team and how they approaches were able to change for them throughout the game.

“We just had to fine tune our approaches,” Busch said. “We were putting good swings on the ball early in the game, just hitting it right at people, we knew if we kept sticking to that approach, they would eventually fall and they did.”

With these approaches and the confidence of this team after getting the win on Saturday, they were able to finally get a few runs across the plate and got a huge win in Big Ten play. Off this win, Michigan State plays Western Michigan this week at home and then has a home series against Ohio State this weekend.