From D1 Baseball…
https://d1baseball.com/columns/underdog-...theastern/
Underdog Of The Week: Northeastern
COLUMNS Eric Sorenson - March 9, 2022
You remember Good Will Hunting right?
That’s the movie where Matt Damon and Ben Affleck play inner city Bostonian proletariat types who have a rivalry with the rich, snobby Harvard types in town. They were rough hewn, hardscrabble scamps with a sizable chip on their shoulders and were highly motivated to put it in the faces of their rich rivals.
You want to know about another group of Bostonians who would’ve been perfect “central casting” for that Good Will Hunting movie? The Northeastern Huskies baseball team. Coach Mike Glavine is used to having a program with a chip on its shoulder and playing like they’ve got a point to prove. And that’s just what they did this past weekend, going down to Raleigh, North Carolina and taking three straight from the eighth-ranked North Carolina State Wolfpack. And I mean, winning all three games comfortably by multiple runs (6-1, 8-5 and 6-0) against the College World Series alums.
Most importantly, the freshman phenom, Tommy Tanks, ended up going just 1-for-12 with no home runs on the weekend as the Huskies won all three games by a combined 20-6 count.
In other words, they went up to the window at the bar and asked the Pack, “Hey, you like apples?… I got her number. How you like them apples?”
Let’s do some quick-hit questions with Northeastern head coach Mike Glavine.
– Okay, first off, I’ve got a dumb question for you. How do you guys always seem to be so good?
“I’m glad you say that, I appreciate that. I think there is a certain formula we try to work with. We have that Northern type of attitude and we have some toughness and a little chip on our shoulder and as coaches we leverage those things to our advantage. We just try to find those hard-nose kind of players. You know, I’m probably not easy to play for. I think I probably have a hockey mentality as a baseball coach. I don’t want to sell our players talent short but maybe we get that type of player that has toughness and they’re raw, maybe not as polished as other players and then we try to work as hard as we can to get them to be the best they can be. And now I’d like to think that we are a program where we are sort of reloading every year, not rebuilding.”
- What were you hoping to see from your team before you went down to N.C. State?
“I really just wanted to see our guys compete. That’s a coaching cliche’ I know, but I just didn’t want to see them back down. I didn’t want to see them be in awe of the situation or of the facility or who we were playing or their ranking, all that stuff. I just wanted to see them compete and be like the team that we see every day in practice, and we were able to do that this past weekend. We have a lot of new faces but we wanted to protect our culture about being a blue-collar team that’s hard to play against and relentless in all phases of the game. A weekend like last weekend just kind shows what we can do if we put it all together.”
– Okay, you won the first game 6-1. What did you say to your team after that first win?
“Didn’t say much, honestly. I just said ‘Hey, great win. You know, anybody can do it once and we’ve never won a series against a top ten opponent.’ I was really sorry that they didn’t get to enjoy it too much (laughs…). I’m always kind of trying to needle them a little bit and I’m sure it gets annoying. But you know, they came out the next day and again just played really well and put successful back to back days together which was really exciting to see.”
– You guys never trailed the entire weekend at N.C. State. What did that do for your team’s confidence going forward?
“I think we needed this for our confidence, yes. I felt before this weekend we were playing tentative and unsure the first couple of weekends. We talked about finding our identity this weekend and the last thing I said was that we wanted to be a team that was fun to watch. We seemed a little tight the first couple of weekends and I thought this was the perfect opportunity for us to just go out there and play well and find our identity. We needed to show that we could play at a high level and that built our confidence and I thought we just went out there and played like a fun team to watch.”
– I know it’s only been a couple weeks, but what do you like most about this team?
“I like our speed. I like how we got a lot of new faces and how they just kind of fit right into our culture. We’ve got three freshman in particular that are really stepping in right away here and having a huge impact in Mike Sirota (team-leading .408 average), Justin Bosland (.268, 8-of-9 stolen bases) on the offensive side and Dennis Colleran (0-1, 2.16, .103 OBA) on the mound. I love the work ethic of this team, how enthusiastic they are and the fact that they love to play. I love how we have a few obstacles here to overcome. For instance, we haven’t had the use of our indoor facility for two years now because of Covid. But here our guys are hopping on busses at 6:30 in the morning and going to indoor practice facilities every morning because we have high schools that use these facilities in the afternoon and evening. We just had to structure our class schedules so that they have classes in the afternoon. They just have this don’t-give-a-crap attitude and that we’ll just overcome it and figure it out. That’s what I love about these guys.”
– Now you’ve gotta turn around and go down to Clemson this weekend, who just swept South Carolina. What’s your feelings going into this weekend?
“Yeah, who put this schedule together right? Ha ha. No rest for the weary here, I can’t really sit back and enjoy this past weekend. We’re going into another juggernaut here in Clemson and I kind of like taking this team to different places, right. Obviously these types of challenges and going to Clemson, it’s obviously a program that has incredible history and a beautiful facility and they’ve got an awesome team. So it’s going to be a huge challenge. To me, it’s a no brainer in a sense because we get to expose our guys to another tough environment against one of the best teams in the country and find ways to get better. My attitude is ‘let’s try to go toe-to-toe and try to battle and play as hard as we can and get better from it.’”
###
