Thursday, March 28, 2024

Baseball team puts on rally caps for playoff run

April 13, 2001

The MSU baseball team is about to embark on its “biggest weekend of the season” head coach Ted Mahan said.

“We’ve got four weekends left - 16 games - and we want to make the playoffs. In order to do that, we can’t have any more bad weekends,” he said.

MSU will entertain red-hot Ohio State for four games this weekend at Kobs Field.

A successful weekend won’t be easy against the Buckeyes, who have won 23 of their last 25 games and currently stand second in the Big Ten with a 6-2 record. The Spartans are eighth in the conference at 3-7.

“The fact we’re playing a team that good at home and knowing the situation we’re in now, we have to play well,” Mahan said.

Starting time for today’s game at Kobs Field is 3 p.m. Saturday’s doubleheader and Sunday’s single game will begin at 1 p.m.

After a rough stretch where the team dropped six of seven games to Big Ten foes Purdue and Minnesota, MSU is riding a two-game winning streak after defeating Western Michigan University on Tuesday at home and Grand Valley State University on Wednesday at Old Kent Park in Comstock Park.

Sophomore center fielder Bob Malek, who leads the Big Ten with a .461 batting average, said the team is starting to get things turned around after a rough stretch.

“It was weird how it happened - we were playing well and then all of a sudden we had a bad series against Purdue,” he said. “We just kind of hit a tailspin, but we’re starting to play better now and I think we’re ready to go.”

Senior pitcher and tri-captain Scott Brandell said time is running out if the Spartans want to move up in the standings.

“We have to be ready to go - no more messing around,” he said. “Now we’re getting later in the season, we need to start getting wins.”

With their preseason goal of winning the Big Ten regular-season championship seemingly out of reach, Brandell said the Spartans are now focusing on making the Big Ten Tournament and making some noise there.

“Now our goal is to get to the Big Ten Tournament so we can show why we should be champs,” he said.

Injury update

The Spartans’ two recent victories came with a price, as they lost senior catcher and tri-captain Rick Court and junior infielder Jared Koutnik to injuries.

Court is out for at least a month and possibly for the season after suffering a broken finger from a foul ball in Tuesday’s victory over Western Michigan.

Koutnik suffered an ankle injury against Grand Valley on Wednesday and is out for at least this weekend’s Ohio State series.

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