After clinching the CCIW regular season title just last week, the North Central baseball team is now hosting the CCIW tournament. They started the tournament in impressive fashion with a 14-6 rout of Illinois Wesleyan.
In what was a bitter cold day, North Central was still able to heat up the bats quickly by tallying a five-run first inning. Rob Marinec, ‘21, started the scoring with a single to shallow left after Illinois Wesleyan walked two straight batters. John Carmody, ‘20, then hit another single which brought home two more runs and then Joe Rizzo, ‘21, brought home Carmody shortly after. A fielder’s choice brought home the fifth run of the inning until Wesleyan was able to stop the bleeding.
Illinois Wesleyan was able to string some hits together to make the score 5-3 in the top of the second inning. North Central then tallied two more runs in the bottom half of the inning to make it 7-3.
Illinois Wesleyan wasn’t ready to lay down yet as they had another three-run inning to make it 7-6. There was a scoring drought until the seventh inning when North Central blew it wide open.
North Central posted another five-run inning. Rob Marinec started the rally with a stand-up double, and Colin Weilbacher, ‘20, brought him home with a single. Two passed balls from Illinois Wesleyan pitchers accounted for two runs. Weilbacher came back to the plate in the eighth inning and posted a single to score two more runs which made it 14-6 which ended up being the difference in this game.
Patrick Schaefer, ‘21, threw a gem after coming in to relieve Austin Polezoes, ‘20. Schaefer threw six scoreless innings which lowered his ERA to 1.47 on the season. Weilbacher also impressed by going 3-4 and tallying three RBI’s while scoring two runs.
The next game for North Central will be tomorrow at 1 p.m. against Millikin University where they enter play in the winner’s bracket.
