Baseball had a rough week in which it played eight games, losing six of the contests.

The Huskies (4-15) were swept by Southern Illinois in a three-game series earlier in the week. They lost 8-3 in game one, 3-2 in game two and 4-2 in the series finale.

NIU lost its fourth game in a row when it was defeated by Murray State, 7-1. The Huskies bounced back the next day with their first victory of the week, defeating the Racers, 8-4.

The Huskies broke their bats out in the second inning when they jumped on Murray State and scored seven runs. Sophomore designated hitter Micah McCulloch’s two-RBI double to right center was the big hit in the inning.

Redshirt junior Zach Badgley pitched five innings, giving up three runs, and earned his first victory of the season. Freshman Jon Savarise pitched the final four innings of the game and gave up one run in his first save of the season.

NIU then traveled to Nashville for the Music City Tournament. It lost a close, hard-fought game against Belmont, 4-3, and followed that up with a 12-8 loss to Lipscomb.

In their final game of the week, the Huskies defeated Belmont in a rematch, 8-2. Junior pitcher Alex Klonowski picked up his second win in another strong performance. He pitched eight innings in which he allowed two runs while recording two strikeouts.

“Alex challenges hitters,” said coach Ed Mathey. “He’s a strike thrower. He can move the ball around the plate, and he can locate his fastball and breaking ball. His changeup is occasionally a good pitch. So that three-pitch combination, and the fact that he can move it in and out and up and down in the strike zone, really helps him out.”

The Huskies played well offensively as they scored eight runs on 11 hits. Junior first baseman Jeff Zimmerman went two for five and drove in two runs. Freshman left fielder Brandon Mallder entered the game for junior left fielder Connor Schomig in the sixth inning and went two for two and recorded two RBIs.

“We’ve been making some adjustments,” Mathey said. “We’ve been running into a little bit of bad luck. …We’ve had guys in scoring position and just didn’t get the hit when we needed to, and when we did hit it hard, it was right at somebody…Now we’re back to settling down and working on having good swings, and the hits are starting to drop.”