While baseball has not played especially strong in its midweek games this season, it will look to turn the tides in a matchup against Northwestern today in Evanston.

The Huskies (16-21) have won their last four MAC series and have lost just two games in that 12-game span; however, during the week it is a completely different story.

Two weeks ago, the Huskies played what coach Ed Mathey called their worst defensive game of the season as they recorded four errors in a 6-3 loss to Illinois State.

Last Tuesday, the Bradley Braves jumped all over the Huskies as they hit three homeruns in the first game and ended up giving the Huskies their worst loss of the season, 19-0.

“We sure would like to be competitive in one of these midweek games,” Mathey said. “You know, sustain nine innings of baseball, good baseball where we pitch it and play some defense.”

To try and turn things around, the Huskies will start left-handed senior Jacob Goldenberg. This will be Goldenberg’s fist start of the season. He has made three appearances, pitching three innings while giving up four earned runs on six hits.

“We’re going to monitor him a little bit,” Mathey said. “He’s probably going to be in that 40-50 pitch range, maybe a little bit more depending on how the games going. We need to have him ready for the weekend with our bullpen so we don’t want to tax him out too much.”

The Wildcats (17-14) will look to continue their strong play of late as they have won three out of their last four games, including a conference series win over Michigan.

“They are going to be a team that will be opportunistic offensively,” Mathey said. “They’ll put bunts down, they’ll run the bases. Arms wise, they have some very good arms; they’ve got good arms out of their bullpen.”

As of late, the Huskies have been good at capitalizing with runners in scoring position with two outs. If that continues, they may be able to turn their midweek crisis around.

“I think we’re just staying positive,” Mathey said. “We’re not pressing like we were doing earlier in the year… Guys are feeling confident, they are in their battling, and we’ve had several innings start with two outs and nobody on base and then we scored some runs, so those are good things and I hope…that continues.”