Northwestern baseball is back on the grind this weekend after taking the week off from playing. After a tough series against No. 25 USC, in which the 'Cats did manage to salvage a game on Sunday, they got some well deserved rest with no mid-week action.
Tonight, though, they'll be back on the field and back on the road, this time heading out west to take on Big Ten rival Oregon. Game one is tonight at 6:05 p.m. CT, and games will be played on Saturday and Sunday as well to make it a three-game set.
The Wildcats, as mentioned before, are coming off a 1-2 weekend at home against USC that featured a little bit of everything -- it had a snow game, a blowout loss and a walk off W.
The Ducks, meanwhile, are in the midst of a six-game win streak following two consecutive sweeps against Xavier and Indiana. Unfortunately for the 'Cats, this is a red hot team that is also just flat-out good. Oregon is actually ranked higher than the Trojans were, coming in at No. 21 in the country to start the season.
It's a tough draw for Northwestern, which was saddled with a pretty brutal start to Big Ten play. It's not often in this conference that you get stuck playing ranked opponents in consecutive weekends, but that's what has happened here.
It also might be a long-term sign of good things to come for the conference as a whole. The B1G, which has long been considered more of an afterthought as a baseball conference, is certainly improving with the addition of West Coast squads. But that's neither here nor there as it relates to Northwestern's situation right now.
For the 'Cats to have a chance, they're going to need their best hitters to produce against superior pitching. Against USC, NU was actually able to hold the Trojans down on the mound in 2-of-3 contests (in the other game it allowed 15). But the lineup struggled mightily.
Both center fielder Jack Lausch and shortstop Jackson Freeman have had electric starts to the season, all told, so don't be shocked if the two of them help power this offense to higher levels than it achieved last weekend. Baseball is a game of stats, and stats revert to the mean.
Whatever this case, this will surely be a difficult matchup on the road. If Northwestern can head back to Evanston with at least one win, I'm sure that will be enough to allow head coach Ben Greenspan to sleep at night. It will certainly keep them in a decent spot as the season rolls on and the schedule gets a bit easier.