In the season opening series for the Irish over the weekend of March 19th and 20th, Notre Dame hosted Illinois State, a team that came into this series having already played a week’s worth of games over their spring break. That extra experience showed.

While the Irish hung in game one, costly errors across the board ended up being the culprit of three tough losses, despite solid pitching out of the gate. The full promise of the Irish bats were also on display in flashes throughout the series, and with more practice against live pitching, Notre Dame will most definitely be able to get out of a series similar to this with at least a couple of wins.

Sticking with the reliable pitching while limiting walks, cleaning up the defense behind those pitchers, and getting some consistency out of the Irish bats are the goals for Notre Dame heading into this weekend’s away series against Illinois.