Although senior first baseman Jeff Holm said he rather would play in the warmer climate, he acknowledged taking the field when you still can see your breath simply is a part of playing baseball in the north.

“It’s fun to go to Florida, get the warm weather,” Holm said. “But we all consciously made the choice to go to Michigan State. That’s the weather we chose, and we’ll have to deal with it.”

While playing in the much milder temperatures of the South, the Spartans got off to their best start since 2002 by winning 12 of their first 15 games, including each of the first five.

“For the most part, it’s been pretty good,” head coach Jake Boss Jr said. “Overall, we’ve been swinging the bat well, defensively we’ve been playing well and we’ve been pitching extremely well.”

At the plate, the Spartans have been led by a pair of seniors putting up monster numbers in Holm and outfielder Brandon Eckerle. Eckerle leads the Big Ten in batting (.500) and hits (36).

Meanwhile, Holm is hitting for a .422 batting average and leads the Big Ten with 20 RBIs and 10 stolen bases.

On the mound, Kurt Wunderlich — another senior looking to have a successful final season at MSU — is the leader of one of the best pitching staffs in the conference. The right-hander has started the season with a 3-1 record for the Spartans, whose 2.74 team ERA is the best of all Big Ten teams.

And with a team that Boss said sometimes will have six freshmen and sophomores in the lineup at any given point, having a strong core of seniors to lead the Spartans has been crucial.

“They’ve been the key to our success up to this point,” Boss said. “Eckerle and Holm are two of the top-three hitters in the Big Ten in batting average, and Kurt’s been the anchor of the pitching staff. Those guys are going to have to do it for us all year.”

MSU hopes to take its good hitting and pitching back to its home state when the Spartans take on Michigan at 5 p.m. tonight at Ray Fisher Stadium at Wilpon Baseball Complex in Ann Arbor in the first of a three-game series. Although both teams play in the Big Ten, the Wolverines (6-12) were left off MSU’s conference schedule this season, making this weekend a nonconference series.

However, Holm and Eckerle both said each game will be treated like a conference matchup, and because of the rivalry between the two programs, nobody will take U-M lightly.

“To me and a lot of other people, it’s a conference game,” Holm said. “The biggest game of the year is (Friday), and the biggest game after that is the next day. We’re going to attack it like it means the world to us.”

After Friday’s game, the two teams will come to East Lansing on Saturday for a 1:05 p.m. matchup at McLane Baseball Stadium at Kobs Field and then return to Ann Arbor for a 1 p.m. first pitch Sunday.

Eckerle said playing the Wolverines will give him and the Spartans an idea as to how they stack up against the rest of the conference. Along with that, it will give most MSU fans their first chance to see what Eckerle hopes is a team poised to win a conference title.

“Number one goal is the Big Ten championship, and that’s really the only goal I care about,” Eckerle said. “We haven’t had one in a long time, and if I could end my career with the Big Ten championship, that would be the best way to go out.”