NIU baseball coach Dave Schrage said the key to winning this season would be defense from the infield.

The Huskies’ infield let the second-year coach down, as they gave up 6 errors against Murray State on Sunday in an 11-10 loss.

The Thoroughbreds scored 8 runs in the first three innings, only to see that lead evaporate. The Huskies scored 2 runs in the fifth and 5 in the eighth to tie the game at 10-all. The Thoroughbreds scored a run to take the 11-10 victory.

“Defensively, we didn’t make the routine plays. We dropped routine fly balls and threw the ball away. You’re not going to win many ball games when you give up 9 earned runs like we did today. We’re going to have to get better defensively if we want to win games in the Mid-American Conference.”

The Huskies lost two games of the three-game series, winning only the Saturday game. NIU (4-2) was coming off a sweep over Tennessee-Martin.

“The bullpen did a great job for us today, but our defense was ugly,” Schrage said. “We showed a lot of character offensively all weekend, battling back from behind, but we didn’t show a lot of confidence today. We were very tentative on defense.”

The Huskies were able to snap Murray State’s seven-game winning streak after pulling out the 4-2 victory.

Brad Gavelek (2-0) pitched a complete-game, striking out seven batters without a walk and allowing only four hits.

“Brad threw an outstanding game, going the distance in less than 100 pitches,” Schrage said. “He was ahead of all the hitters and didn’t walk anybody. He was just outstanding today. Everything starts on the mound, and he set the tone for us.”

Senior ace Dan Badgley could not duplicate his performance from last weekend that saw him strike out nine batters with no walks. Badgley had 7 walks against Murray State and threw 3 wild pitches but managed to strike out 5 Thoroughbred batters.

NIU battled from behind, scoring two runs in the seventh inning to pull within two, 6-4, but Murray State tacked on two more runs in the bottom of the seventh to take the 8-4 lead. Both teams scored three more runs in the next two innings.

“This was an ugly game, all around,” Schrage said. “We only made one error, but we made some poor decisions on where to throw the ball and gave them a lot of extra bases. Dan Badgley wasn’t sharp. He had seven walks and three wild pitches, so that was exactly the opposite of his performance last weekend.”