BATON ROUGE, La. — After four hours of hard-fought baseball in Death Valley, Northeastern shocked both the No. 2 ranked Tigers and the collegiate sports world, as they took down the defending national champions 13-10 on their home dirt.
The Huskies came into the weekend in Louisiana still seeking their first win of the season. After four games against Grambling State and LSU, Northeastern not only found their first three wins, but they also upset one of the nation’s best to cap things off Monday night.
“[The win is] huge, huge win for this group,” said head coach Mike Glavine. “We’re young, we’re inexperienced, and so for them to be able to play in this environment against defending national champions, … [it’s a] great win for these guys to get confidence, and obviously, let’s say, one of the biggest regular-season wins in program history.”
Not only is it one of the most notable regular season performances for the Huskies in more than 100 seasons of D-I baseball, but it also stands as the first time Northeastern has bested a top-5 (or better) ranked opponent since the turn of the century.
Program history was made to say the least.
Great starting pitching from senior Ryan Griffin — who went 5.1 innings, allowing just four hits and two runs to the 23 batters he saw, and picked up his first career win — coupled with an offensive onslaught in the second and third innings, guided the Huskies to the upset. Griffin sat down the first six batters he faced and kept LSU scoreless into the fourth, giving the Huskies some much-needed stability so the offense could flourish.
And flourish they did, scoring four runs in the second — off the bats of Carter Bentley, Cooper Tarantino, and Harrison Feinberg — to secure the early lead. LSU still sported a donut on the scoresheet going into the third, but the Huskies’ bats stayed hot, as they tacked on another six runs courtesy of an AJ Aschettino single, a Chris Walsh three-run homerun (his first of the year and second of his career), and a Feinberg RBI single.
By the time the dust had settled, Northeastern was up 10-0.
The Tigers had some here-and-there scoring in the middle innings, cutting the deficit to 10-1 in the fourth and 11-2 in the sixth, but the Huskies continued to respond.
They found their largest lead of the game (11 runs) in the top of the seventh after Aschettino made his way home on a passed ball and Walsh knocked in a sacrifice fly to score Tarantino. Up 13-2, Northeastern threatened to end the game early via the 10-run mercy rule.
An important thing to point out about the win, beyond just that the bats came alive against a great team, is that it took everyone to get it done. Northeastern got at least one hit from every player in the lineup and six-of-nine batters earned an RBI.
“Certainly one of the biggest hits in the game was on our nine-hitter, Chris Walsh; [he] hit that three-run home run, I mean that was huge,” Glavine said. “[But] to be able to get hits from all nine guys and have contributions, to be able to [have] everybody chip in, was just a total team effort tonight.”
With all that said, the Tigers did mount a comeback effort after they replaced nearly every player in their starting lineup — sans designated hitter Zach Yorke — cutting the lead to three by the ninth. However, in the end, the 11-run gap proved too much to surmount.
It’s a statement victory and caps off just the weekend the now 3-6 Huskies have been looking for going into conference play. For Glavine, the win also shows that, “When we play with confidence, we can do some special things.”
The Huskies will return to the diamond to begin CAA conference play Friday, March 6, at 2:00 p.m. EST. as they once again hit the road to take on Stony Brook. Max Schwartzberg will have the call from Long Island on WRBB Sports+.
Luke Graham is the Digital Content Manager for WRBB Sports. He has covered Northeastern hockey and baseball with WRBB both on-air and in print for three years. Read all his articles here, and follow him on X here.