Rutgers baseball is headed back to the Big Ten tournament after defeating Northwestern in its last series of the regular season. After having an ugly start to Big Ten play, the Scarlet Knights were able to rattle off four conference series wins in their last five conference series to propel themselves to the conference tournament.
Rutgers used a strong seventh inning to propel them to an 8-5 win over the Wildcats in game one of the series. After falling behind 4-2, Jack Sweeney hit an RBI triple before
scoring himself to tie the game. After, Trey Wells ran one in to give the Knights the lead before Ryan Jaros singled in another and Chase Krewson doubled in two more to bring it to 8-4. Northwestern would add one more in the bottom of the ninth, but it would not be enough to overcome Rutgers seventh inning scoring barrage, with pitcher Joe Mazza handling business late in the game to earn the save.
The Wildcats would get their revenge in game 2 by winning a close 7-6 battle. Northwestern was able to pull off the win despite Rutgers hitting five home runs.
The Knights showed their offensive firepower in the final game of the series, beating the Wildcats 15-9, largely due to a five-run fifth inning and a four-run ninth inning. The Rutgers bats totaled 15 runs on 18 hits, with Chase Krewson, Ryan Jaros, Charlie Meglio, and Matt Chatelle all driving in three runs, and Krewson hitting his ninth home run of the season in the process. Pitcher Jack Kirchner picked up his first win on the mound for Rutgers this season in this game.
Rutgers will now shift its focus to next week’s Big Ten Tournament in Omaha, Nebraska, where it will face the No.6 seed Michigan as the No.10 seed at 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday to open the double-elimination portion of the tournament.
