BATON ROUGE, LA. — On Sunday, the Huskies returned to Alex Box Stadium with a statement to make after dropping a winnable game the day prior. However, in rare fashion, the arms and the bats aligned leading to a 10-0 victory for Northeastern over Grambling.
Northeastern set the tone for this game early by causing immediate trouble for Tigers starter Trenton Shaw. Leadoff man Carmelo Musacchia reached base on balls, and in true Huskies manner, started playing around on the basepaths creating a distraction for the southpaw Shaw.
Across his next two batters faced — Harrison Feinberg and Ryan Gerety — Shaw would pick over to Musacchia eight times rather than focusing on the batter at the plate. This started what could only be described best as the Huskies playing a strong mental game with Shaw that continued throughout the rest of his outing.
Despite struggling against the early-inning batters, Northeastern starter Andrew Wertz pitched to an impressive scoreless statline of five innings pitched, six hits, one walk issued, and seven strikeouts to his name.
“[The strong pitching] starts with Wertz,” said head coach Mike Glavine following Sunday’s matchup. “When he was landing his breaking ball, that’s when the strikeouts were coming. It was good to see Andrew pitch awesome. It was the best outing for us, again, [he’s] landing that secondary stuff.”
In the top of the third inning, Feinberg got the action started as he reached first base on an infield single. He then stole second and third to put himself in prime position to score. Shortly after his tour around the bases, a wild pitch allowed Feinberg to come home, getting this high scoring match-up started for the Huskies.
The offense for Northeastern got even hotter with three Huskies launching home runs. AJ Aschettino continued his hit-filled weekend with a single, followed by a Cooper Tarentino no-doubt homer in the fourth to extend the lead to three.
Wertz’s day would come to a close at the end of the fifth inning when he pitched himself out of a bases loaded jam with a strikeout and a fly-out to the well-positioned Ian Oehlschlaeger.
The Huskies were fired up and wanted to keep their presence rolling, and they did just that.
Andrew Basel would be the next Husky to sling the rock. The sophomore used just 24 pitches to retire all nine batters he faced from the sixth-to-eighth innings.
Simultaneously, the offense woke up as Feinberg obliterated a baseball from the hand of Mohamed Horati — a solo shot homerun to make it 4-0. Every single soul in the stadium knew that ball was long gone when the plaster of the barrel on the ball sounded as if Feinberg was using wood rather than the resonating ping that is usually heard from the NCAA standard metal bats.
To tack on just five pitches later, Gerety followed in Feinberg’s footsteps and cranked out a line drive wallscraper into the leftfield field bleachers on his opposite side.
Needless to say, the back-to-back solo shots from the two Husky stars, broke the scoring open on their way to a blowout victory.
Although leading 5-0 headed into the eighth, the Huskies had struggled to drive in existing baserunners. Through the first three games of the four-game weekend series, Northeastern had stranded 30 runners on base across their 26 offensive half-innings.
Matt Brinker would deliver an outlier to the aforementioned stat by picking up two RBIs with a double in the eighth frame that scored Feinberg and second-baseman Chris Walsh.
The Huskies continued their prowess by scoring three more insurance runs in the top of the ninth. The first run coming from a bases loaded walk by who else but Harrison Feinberg, again, and the remaining two came immediately after, courtesy of a Gerety single.
The night would come to a close when Mike Glavine brought in righty Tom Mahoney to finish the game. The freshman did allow an inconsequential single but made quick work of the Tigers grabbing two punchouts.
Despite little collegiate experience in his young career, Mahoney completed his task as ordered and added the final touches to the shutout in an all around impressive 10-0 victory.
Northeastern bounced back and made a statement on Sunday following Saturday’s 3-1 loss to the top talent of LSU who they will rematch against on Monday.
“I want to see us. I want to see what I saw tonight,” Coach Glavine commented on the upcoming matchup. “I want to see the same dugout. I want to see the same energy. I want to see the same confidence and swagger when you get the opportunity to play against the best team in the country.”
WRBB will have that call returning to Baton Rouge along with the Huskies on Monday, March 2nd at 7:30 pm EST/ 6:30 pm CST. Luke Graham and Mike Kaminsky will be on air.
Michael Kaminsky is a sophomore at Northeastern in his first year with WRBB. He is thrilled to be a part of the broadcast team, and is eager to continue covering his favorite sport as the baseball season progresses. You can read more of his coverage with WRBB here.