Spartan Baseball To Face Northwestern in Big Ten Tournament
5/19/2002 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
May 19, 2002
EAST LANSING, Mich. - The Michigan State baseball team, which makes its first appearance in the Big Ten Tournament since 1994, earned the No. 3 seed and will face No. 6 Northwestern on Wednesday (May 22), at 3:30 p.m. CDT at Siebert Field on the campus of the University of Minnesota.
Michigan State (36-17 overall, 16-12 Big Ten) took two out of three games from Northwestern in early April as the fourth game in the series was rained out. The Wildcats won the opener 6-3 (April 5), before the Spartans posted 3-1 and 9-1 victories the next day (April 6).
"Northwestern's pitching is as good as anyone in this league," said MSU head coach Ted Mahan. "They have four very good starters and a good left-handed relief pitcher. We will definitely have to play well to beat a team that has played well the last two weeks."
The Spartans will enter the Big Ten Tournament with wins in seven of their last nine contests, including a four-game sweep of Penn State over the weekend. It marked MSU's first series sweep over a Big Ten opponent since 1992. Northwestern (24-27 overall, 14-15 Big Ten) split a four-game series with Indiana over the weekend.
Game No. 1 will feature No. 4 Indiana and No. 5 Iowa on Wednesday at 12 p.m. CDT. Minnesota earned the tournament's No. 1 seed and will face the lowest remaining seed of Wednesday's games on Thursday (May 23) at 7 p.m. CDT. No. 2 seed Ohio State will face the highest remaining seed also on Thursday at 3:30 p.m. CDT. The two losing teams from Wednesday will meet in Thursday's first game at 12 p.m. CDT.
Friday's action gets underway at 12 p.m. CDT. The double elimination tournament will run through Saturday, May 25.