Baseball Travels to Northwood for Non-Conference Tilt - Wayne State University Athletics (2024)

Hyelim Shin

Drew Hill is hitting .327 (32-for-98) so far in his freshman season.

Baseball 4/15/2024 12:10:00 PM Cooper Weidenthaler, Sports Communications Specialist

The Warriors lost to the Timberwolves 9-8 on March 9 in Florida.

DETROIT -- The Wayne State University baseball team (23-12 overall) is set for its final non-conference game of the 2024 season, a 3 p.m. Tuesday affair at Northwood (19-16 overall). The Warriors and Timberwolves faced off on March 9 in Davenport, Fla. with NU coming out on top, 9-8.

Wayne State has dropped three games in a row against Northwood and six of the last eight between the two teams. Prior to that, neither squad had won more than two in a row against the other since 2017. This season, the Timberwolves have gone 6-9 in contests outside of the G-MAC and 7-2 in home games. On the other side, the Warriors have an 11-6 mark in non-conference play and are 8-5 in true road contests.

Last Meeting
Wayne State struck first with two runs in the opening inning and another in the second. Drew Hill (Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich. / Grosse Pointe North) doubled in both Bennett Hitzelberger (Richmond, Mich.) and Mason McGuire (Lyon Twp., Mich. / Brighton (Mott CC)) before CJ Maury (Brampton, Ont. / Mayfield SS) singled in Logan Van Sicklen (Waterford Twp., Mich. / Waterford Kettering).

Northwood proceeded to score a run of its own in the home half of the second before the Warriors punched right back with a single run in both the third and fourth frames. Hill brought in Hitzelberger with an RBI ground out to first and Nate Crossman (Canton, Mich. / Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard) hit a solo home run to left, the first of his career.

WSU opened up a 7-1 advantage in the sixth when Tony Hatzigeorgiou's (Oxford, Mich.) single to center scored a pair in Crossman and Van Sicklen.

However, NU rattled off four runs in both the sixth and seventh to take a two-run lead, 9-7. In the top of the ninth, Wayne State pulled within one on Logan Tobel's (Brighton, Mich. / Hartland) RBI single (scored Hatzigeorgiou) before he was stranded at first.

Leading the Warriors
This spring, six players are hitting close to or above the .300 mark including Hitzelberger (.387 - seventh in the GLIAC), Kyle Ray (Woodhaven, Mich.; .385 - eighth), Hatzigeorgiou (.348), Hill (.327), McGuire (.321) and Maury (.294).

On the mound, Ashton Potts (Sterling Heights, Mich. / Stevenson (Kellogg CC)) has emerged as the team leader in ERA at 2.90, a number that ranks second in the league. Right behind him in a tie-for-third and fifth respectively are Karter Fitzpatrick (Monroe, Mich. / Carleton Airport) at 3.26 and Griffin Kilander (Livonia, Mich. / Stevenson) at 3.48.

As a team, Wayne State is hitting .301 (second in the GLIAC) and has a team ERA of 4.99 (second).

Scouting the Timberwolves
Northwood holds a team batting average of .281 (eighth in the G-MAC) and ERA of 5.48 (fourth).

The Timberwolves have belted 34 home runs, third-best total in the conference, including a pair of players with nine apiece in Matt Magno and Blake Salamon. Magno and Salamon are also the team leaders in batting average (.374 and .344) as well as RBIs (42 and 35). Ben Clark is Northwood's third player above the .300 mark at .333 while Myles Beale is on top in stolen bases with 10 in his 12 attempts.