NIU baseball coach Dave Schrage hoped a win over then—No. 16 Stetson on March 14, would have lit a fire under the Huskies.

NIU defeated Stetson 3-2 in 10 innings and gave the Huskies their first win against a nationally-ranked team. Schrage said the win gave the Huskies confidence they could defeat anyone in the Mid-American Conference.

But in the last 14 games, the Huskies have done anything but that, going 4-10.

This weekend’s series against Eastern Michigan might have been rock-bottom for the Huskies, as they lost the four-game series against the Eagles. In Saturday’s double-header, NIU lost 10-2 and 4-0. The Huskies lost 8-2 and 18-3 in Sunday’s double-header.

“I did not expect anything like this happening,” Schrage said. “I will be the first to admit that we haven’t played well in all aspects of the game. This is embarrassing.”

Schrage said the best game the Huskies played in the seven conference games was in Friday’s 4-0 loss to Eastern Michigan. Schrage added the pitching from senior Brad Gavelek, who pitched a complete game and struck out six Eagle batters, was the reason it was the best conference game so far for the Huskies.

“Other than that game, we have been giving up double-digit runs in the other six games,” Schrage said. “It is a thing where we are not competing.”

Schrage was hoping with the way NIU played against Bradley, winning the double-header Wednesday, things would be turning around. But this weekend proved Schrage wrong.

The reason why the Huskies haven’t been playing good in conference is because of the lack of good pitching in their non-conference schedule, Schrage said.

“I was encouraged after the Bradley series,” the second-year coach said. “I thought we were going to gel together. But we aren’t hitting consistently. We need to put this together in the key games. We haven’t got good pitching in the non-conference games. The quality of pitching we are facing is not at the level we should be seeing here in the MAC.”