NIU baseball coach Ed Mathey treats non-conference weekday games as training grounds for MAC weekend play.

This week will be the first since March the Huskies will play only one midweek game, giving the team more time to smooth over the fielding and pitching errors that contributed to NIU’s three losses against Central Michigan over the weekend.

“We’re hoping to change the execution of the strategy,” the third-year NIU coach said. “Our pitchers didn’t throw the ball last weekend as well as they had previously, but we’re hoping to work that out and give some of the guys who don’t get much time over the weekends some swings.”

NIU has won six of its last nine non-conference games, and faces Purdue-North Central at 3 p.m. today at Ralph McKenzie Field, where the Huskies are 5-9 this season.

For the rest of the week, the Huskies (10-26, 1-11 MAC) will have practice time to prepare for an eight-game road trip that will include six MAC competitions.

Mathey said the team will try to find another game for Wednesday.

“What they do is keep you consistent,” Mathey said of midweek games. “But most of all we’ll be working out some things because we need to figure out how to start winning some ball games.”

The Panthers (16-17, 6-6 Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference) look to win their fifth straight game against the Huskies, who have lost four straight.

Jake Blair, who hadn’t played since April 10, saw action at third base in all three games over the weekend against CMU. Blair had been nursing an aggravated back strain.

“Jake’s getting close,” Mathey said. “Being out of the lineup is tough because it takes your timing mechanism off, but he’s almost back to 100 percent.”