Any coach will tell you that after a team loses several games in a row, it no longer plays to win. When that happens, coaches say, losing becomes expected and contagious.

If losing is infectious, it’s an epidemic on NIU’s baseball team. For the seventeenth straight game, the winless Huskies went down to defeat.

This time it was the Aurora Spartans that kept the Huskies in their sickly state, beating them 9-6 in a Wednesday afternoon game at Huskie Diamond.

“I don’t know what it will take to get over that hump,” NIU head coach Joe “Spanky” McFarland said. NIU may have been able to pull itself over the hump on Wednesday if not for another late inning letdown.

For seven innings, the Huskies played the Cougars evenly, as they tagged winning pitcher John Bachio (4-0) for six runs in seven innings. But with the score tied at six in the eighth, the impossible dream (a win) turned into inevitable reality (another loss).

With losing pitcher Jim Gurney (0-3) on in relief of starter Mike Young, the Spartans began the eighth with a single by third baseman Mark Foltmer. AU’s first baseman Frank Markett then drove Foltmer home with a triple that was just off of centerfielder Mark Mershon’s glove.

McFarland then replaced Gurney with Brent Horlock. After striking out an AU batter, Horlock got centerfielder Tom King to hit a routine fly ball to leftfielder Horace Woods. Woods dropped the ball.

On the error, King took second, and Markett’s pinch runner, Matt Cannon, scored. With two outs, Horlock got pinch hitter Bob Vozza to hit a grounder to first baseman Eric Riebel. But the ball bounced off Riebel’s chest, allowing King to score all the way from second.

“They (NIU) have to learn how to win,” McFarland said. “Once (Foltmer) got on, the pressure was on. We start thinking about how we’re going to lose the game instead of win it. We desperately need some leadership.”

After the Huskies went down in order in their half of the eighth, the game was called due to darkness.