Coming into the season, one of the biggest questions for the NIU baseball team was how it would replace 70 percent of the team’s innings pitched it lost after last season.

The early answers aren’t great.

The Huskies gave up six, eight, 10 and nine runs in four games over the weekend in Starkville, Miss. at the BankFirst Baseball Challenge, going 1-3 in that span.

“I would give them a grade of about a C, just OK,” said NIU head coach Ed Mathey. “We had a couple of veteran guys we were hoping to get a little more out of in their first outing. Some of our younger pitchers did a real nice job getting out there. For seeing college hitters for the first time, they did pretty well.”

On Friday, NIU dropped a 6-3 game to North Florida and lost 8-1 to the host Mississippi State Bulldogs. On Saturday, the team earned its first win of the year with an 11-10 win over MSU, and lost the weekend finale to UNF on Sunday, 9-3.

Senior Brandon Copp started the opener, giving up three earned runs in 5 1/3 innings. Freshman Chris Wakefield started the nightcap Friday, walking six guys which led to six earned runs in 5 1/3 innings.

Andy Deain, last year’s closer, started Saturday’s game and gave up four earned runs in 4 1/3 innings. Junior college transfer Chuck Lukanen started Sunday and gave up six runs, but only one of them was earned.

Hitting-wise, Jordin Hood was the star of the weekend. The junior went 11-14 with a homer and three RBIs over the weekend.

“He swung the bat very well,” Mathey said. “Jordin was able to hit all types of pitches they were throwing. The opposing coaches were very complimentary of him.”

Even though NIU only went 1-3 in Mississippi, considering NIU hasn’t been outside all winter and the opponents it had to deal with, Mathey thought it was a productive trip.

“We saw some good things,” Mathey said. “We obviously came down to a very good baseball environment. North Florida’s a good program as well. We would have liked to have some more wins; overall it was a good trip. We haven’t been out since October. The speed of the game, the pacing of the game, it’s a very difficult thing to replicate.”