NIU baseball (27-13, 17-8) secured its program record 17th MAC win of the season, taking a 12-1 victory over Central Michigan University (19-25, 9-16 MAC) on Friday.
“All three phases of the game were actually very good today,” said NIU baseball head coach Ryan Copeland. “Offensively, probably one of our best efforts the entire season. Max gave us a great start. Really good to see him bounce back after a couple tough ones. And defensively, we made every play, so we just played complimentary baseball. That’s what that’s supposed to look like.”
Senior pitcher Max Vaisvila opened the three-game weekend set with his 12th start of the season. The Huskies still have yet to lose a game started by Vaisvila in 2026.
Vaisvila picked up his seventh win of the season after going seven innings, giving up just one run and striking out five Chippewas. The southpaw lowered his ERA on the season to 3.41 after his outing, good for fourth lowest in the MAC.
“Pretty good offense over there, they’re pretty talented and I thought coach Peacock and Max did a great job game planning for their offense and landed a bunch of offspeed stuff early and got them off balance,” Copeland said. “I thought he just did a really good job pitching with his fastball. There were two tough ones in a row for Max but that’s going to happen when you make the amount of starts that he’s going to.”
Junior catcher Cooper Cohn made another appearance out of the bullpen, going 0.2 innings and allowing no runs. The right-handed pitcher has yet to allow an earned run through 6.1 innings this season.
Senior pitcher John Lyman closed out the final 1.1 innings of the contest, striking out four of the six Chippewas he faced to secure NIU’s victory. Lyman’s four Ks in his outing is a season high.
Copeland picked up the 200th win of his coaching career after Friday’s victory. He has compiled a record of 200-117 so far throughout his coaching career, and a record of 69-79 as head coach at NIU.
“When you coach long enough eventually you’re going to hit those milestones,” Copeland said. “They don’t happen without such a good coaching staff. I’ve had coach (Joe) Kelch and coach (Calvin) Peacock with me for a long time at a couple different stops. I can’t say enough good things about what they do for our program. And our players, we’ve been very fortunate that we’ve recruited a lot of very good players over the years. At the end of the day they’re the ones out there making the plays.”
The Huskies offense put up another double-digit scoring effort, its 10th such game this season. NIU is also yet to lose a game in which they score in double figures.
Three different Huskies slugged homers in the winning effort, with junior outfielder Charlie Parcell tallying his first long ball of the season.
Sophomore infielder Nolan Sandee slugged his second home run of the season and drove in a team high four RBIs. After a 3-for-5 day at the plate, Sandee raised his batting average to .340.
Since MAC play began in early March, the left-handed shortstop raised his batting average over .100, hitting .227 going into conference play.
Graduate student outfielder/first baseman Gavin Baldwin was the third Huskie to leave the yard with a long ball, his eighth of the season and 23rd of his NIU career.
Baldwin enjoyed a 3-for-5 day at the plate while driving in three runs to bring his total to 41 on the season.
“One through nine, just highly competitive at-bats with that relentless approach,” Copeland said. Our 2-3 hole were 0-for-8 and we put up 12 runs. It just speaks to the depths of our lineup. The bottom of the order was outstanding. You can make an argument that those guys could hit in the middle of our order but we want to have a complete lineup and I thought our guys did a really good job of making sure we didn’t chase outside the zone early.”
UP NEXT
The Huskies’ next game will be at noon Saturday against Central Michigan in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. The game will be streamed on Chippewas All-Access and live stats for the game will be available via SIDEARM Sports.
