NEW ORLEANS – The complementary elements that accompanied the Northwestern State baseball team’s season-long six-game winning streak did not make the trip south Wednesday night.
The Demons got strong starting pitching and solid relief work, but Northwestern’s offense could not solve a quartet of Tulane pitchers in a 2-0 loss at Greer Field at Turchin Stadium. The Green Wave pushed across its runs in the bottom of the seventh and kept the Demons off the board.
NSU comes home to host New Orleans Friday in the opener of a three-game Southland Conference series. First pitch is set for 6:30 p.m. at Brown-Stroud Field.
“We have to pull from the good things we did, and we have to learn from the things we didn’t do so well,” third-year head coach Chris Bertrand said. “Anytime your pitching staff puts up seven zeroes against a good offensive team in an offensive ballpark, that’s good. We put up a zero in the error column. We just never were able to generate anything offensively.”
In a rare midweek pitchers’ duel, the Demons (13-8) got a strong start from sophomore left-hander Carter White, who spun four innings of shutout ball before handing things off to Jacob LeBlanc.
White wiggled out of trouble in the first and second innings before retiring the final eight hitters he faced, keeping the game scoreless through four innings. White began the season as the Demons’ Friday night starter, but has suffered three rocky outings and shifted to midweek work or relief assignments recently.
“Incremental steps forward, and I think that’s what he did tonight,” Bertrand said. “He started to show more flashes of his pitch execution and his pitchability. He showed the ability to get out of some jams and not letting it snowball on him. The last two innings were significantly better, because he started to get ahead of hitters, and he started to pound the strike zone a little bit more. It was wonderful to see him take a giant step forward and, hopefully, with the next couple of times we roll him out there, he can continue to do that.”
White needed to be at his best to match Tulane starter JD Rodriguez and Jude Abbadessa (1-1), who limited the Demons to four hits in the first seven innings.
Northwestern was unable to move a runner into scoring position against the pair as Tulane (11-11) limited the Demons to five total hits.
The Green Wave broke through against LeBlanc (2-2) in the seventh inning as a pair of walks helped set up a Matthias Haas RBI fielder’s choice and a Kaikea Harrison RBI double to give Tulane all the runs it needed.
Thomas Marsala III drew a leadoff walk in the ninth inning before LuisPablo Navarro entered and retired the next three Demons to secure his first save of the season.
“I didn’t think the quality of the at-bats was where it needed to be tonight,” Bertrand said. “Obviously, we didn’t capitalize when we were able to muster a little bit of traffic. It’s a lack of complementary baseball, but I’m proud of the fight that they had. We showed some really good things we can pull some value out of.”
