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Rutgers baseball looking toward Northwestern series

Sophomore first baseman Chris Brito and the Rutgers baseball team are set for a weekend series with Northwestern, looking to improve on the one win in last week’s matchup with Penn State.  – Photo by Scarletknights.com

On Friday, the Rutgers baseball team will travel to Illinois to take on Northwestern, which will be hosting its first home series of the season.

The Scarlet Knights (9-8, 9-8) are looking to bounce back after a rough series against Penn State where they lost 2 out of 3 after having a successful previous two series.

The Wildcats (10-8, 10-8) are coming off a split two-game series against No. 25 Michigan.

For Rutgers, the team will be facing a Northwestern team whose bats are hot so far this season. As a team, the Wildcats have a .280 batting average and have clubbed a total of 36 home runs as a team. Individually, they will look toward Anthony Calarco, who is batting .397 with six runs batted in on the season. Northwestern has a lineup that consists of five batters having a batting average of more than .300.

On the mound, the Wildcats will look toward their ace Mike Doherty, who, in 32.1 innings this year, has an earned run average of 2.78 for his team. After Doherty, his supporting cast of pitchers will look to follow his repeated success.

For the Knights, they will put their faith in junior pitcher Harry Rutkowski to start off the series. In his last outing on Friday, he struck out seven in eight innings against the Nittany Lions (6-11, 6-11) but lost 1-0 after giving up a solo home run in the top of the seventh.

Behind Rutkowski is graduate student pitcher Ben Wereski, who is coming off of his worst start of the year against Penn State, where he went three innings and gave up four runs during the game.

Offensively, redshirt freshman first basemen Jordan Sweeney will look to stay hot after coming up big last week. Sweeney went 7-12 with two home runs, one of them being a game-winning grand slam in the final game of the series against the Nittany Lions.

Additionally, sophomore third baseman Chris Brito will look to sustain his success along with freshman outfielder Ryan Lasko. With these players, Rutgers will aim for a win against Northwestern, starting Friday at 4 p.m.


For updates on the Rutgers baseball team, follow @TargumSports on Twitter.


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