Baseball is set for what will arguably be its toughest test of the season when it plays a four-game set against No. 5 Oregon State this weekend in Corvallis, Ore.

The Beavers (10-3) are playing strong baseball to start the season, winning six of their last seven games. The Huskies are coming into this series after earning their first win of the season against Southern Illinois Friday.

“It’s going to be a tremendous challenge,” said head coach Ed Mathey. “They pitch the ball extremely well, they defend the ball extremely well and they are a pretty efficient offensive group … . We’re going to a great environment; I mean, it’s Oregon State, two-time national champions in 2007 and 2008, and they were in the College World Series last year, so they are a hungry team.”

The Beavers are a strong offensive team led by outfielder Michael Conforto, who has a .333 batting average while leading the team with 20 RBIs. As a team, they have scored 93 runs this season, the 10th-most in college baseball.

The Huskies’ starting pitching is going to play a key role in this series. Mathey will need them to be able to go deep into games to keep his bullpen from pitching a lot of innings.

“Our starting pitching is going to need to be effective,” Mathey said. “You have a situation where you have a four-game set, so you have 36 innings in a matter of pretty much 48 hours, so if our starting pitching can give us some innings, then we can limit our bullpen exposure. I think that’s going to be the key.”

The Huskies got strong outings from pitchers Eli Anderson, Jordan Ruckman and Alex Klonowski last weekend against Southern Illinois. They each lasted six innings or more.

As for the fourth game, the Huskies have not decided who will be the starter. They have narrowed it down to Dirk Ormsby, Anthony Andres, Ben Neumann or Andrew Frankenreider. The decision will come down to how much work the bullpen has done throughout the weekend.

Offensively, the Huskies have been struggling at the plate. Last weekend, they recorded just two runs on 13 hits.

“Our guys have to swing to their capabilities, that’s the big thing,” Mathey said. “We know that they can do it; they just need to do it. That’s a hard thing because it gets into a press situation, and that’s not good in the batter’s box, pressing. We have to put them in situations where we can make it easier on them. So if we have to bunt we’re going to bunt, if we can hit and run then we’ll hit and run, and those type of things will help manufacture some runs, just to get them relaxed and let the game come to them.”