Joe "Spanky" McFarland will pull out the season-long measuring stick when his gang travels to take on the University of Wisconsin-Madison Tuesday. The first-year NIU baseball coach realizes that his club has won 10 of its last 15 contests, but also rationalizes...

For NIU baseball coach Spanky McFarland, it's too bad the season doesn't go any longer, for his Huskies are just starting to hit their stride. After an 0-18 start, NIU has now won 10 of its last 15 games, including three out of four games last weekend...

As Huskies' hurler Mike Young can attest to, you're never too old to begin a serious baseball career. Considered a junior eligibility-wise, the 21-year-old is in his third semester as an NIU Marketing major and his first season as a starting pitcher for...

Two touchdowns and a field goal wouldn't have helped the NIU baseball team on Tuesday as the College of St. Francis racked up a decisive 18-0 victory at Huskie Diamond. "I needed to put in the Prevent Defense," NIU coach Joe "Spanky" McFarland said after...

One extremely lopsided statistic stands out before the first pitch is ever thrown in Tuesday's 3 p.m. NIU_St. Francis College baseball battle at Huskie Diamond. Huskie skipper Joe "Spanky" McFarland steps into the dugout with a 3-20 NIU career coaching...

NIU's mounders will get a big taste of collegiate baseball this weekend—five home games in a 48-hour span. Rockford College invades Huskie Diamond Friday at 3 p.m., while Eastern Illinois heads to DeKalb for four games—two on Saturday (starting at...

On the surface, the NIU baseball program is really struggling right now—one measly victory in 20 tries. Scratch it a little bit and reality pops up. The program is making strides. Last August, Joe "Spanky" McFarland took the NIU job well aware that...

Saturday was an opening day for some NIU athletes that had nothing to do with baseball. Amidst the hoopla surrounding baseball's opening day, the Huskies football squad officially started spring practice Saturday afternoon. Unlike the five previous spring...

Surprise. The NIU baseball team did it, it finally did it. The setting: Huskie Diamond, the place the Huskies like to call "Field of Dreams." But until Sunday, it had been anything but dreamy for the Huskies. In fact, it had been a field of nightmares,...

The NIU baseball team is desperate. Its head coach, Joe McFarland, hopes his lose-weary club's furious search for victory will be over by the weekend's conclusion. The 0-17 Huskies travel to Valparaiso to play Saturday. NIU will then make its way back...

Zero and 17. What else is there to say about the NIU baseball team which has yet to leave the starting blocks? The Huskies need to win just one game to get the monkey off their backs, yet in this 43-game season, a win seems as distant as an Iraqi victory...

Any coach will tell you that after a team loses several games in a row, it no longer plays to win. When that happens, coaches say, losing becomes expected and contagious. If losing is infectious, it's an epidemic on NIU's baseball team. For the seventeenth...