Northwestern coach Len Smith realized before yesterday's nonleague game against Jim Thorpe that his opponent would be most dangerous when looking for its first win of the season.

That is why his strategy was to run the bases with abandon to get as many runners into scoring position as possible. It worked perfectly for the Tigers in their 13-5 victory.The Tigers scored all their runs in the first five innings aided by nine stolen bases and several runners taking the extra base on cutoff throws to the infield."The strength of our team is our offensive aggressiveness," said Smith. "We like to utilize our speed and we will take opportunities with what the opponent's defense will give us."Northwestern jumped out to a two-run lead in the first inning. With one out, Brady Mengel laced a double to left and moved to third on an infield hit by Nick Rodriguez. Collin Breidinger's groundout plated the Tigers' first run and after Rodriguez stole second, he was delivered home on a single by Jake Augustus.The Olympians were blown out in their first three games but have been playing much more competitively of late. They took the lead with three runs in the bottom of the first. After Ryan McCullough drew a leadoff walk and Jordan McElmoyle reached on an error, Dave Everitt singled home McCullough, Bryce Micciche hit a long ground rule double to left, scoring Everitt. Alex Steigerwalt brought home the third run with a sacrifice fly."We came back nicely," said Olympian first year coach, Derek Reis. "The problem has been that our kids still don't believe enough in themselves that they can put a whole game together to come out on top."The Tigers continued to put pressure on McCullough, Jim Thorpe's starting pitcher. In the second, the bottom of the Tiger lineup came through with three straight hits. Tyler Schreiner led off with a double down the left field line and he was singled home by Jordan Storm. Austin Yanek singled and stole two bases before scoring on an infield error.While Northwestern's Storm settled down on the mound and allowed only one run on four hits over the next four innings, his offense tacked on three runs in the third and put the game out of reach with a five spot in the fourth. Helped by two errors and three walks, RBI hits by Rodriguez and Josh Williamson increased the Olympian deficit to nine runs through four innings.Jim Thorpe scored in the fourth on a booming triple to center by designated hitter Ricky Saez and an RBI groundout by Max Pompa."Two of our three components are coming together," said Smith, who is in his 32nd year as head coach. "Except for one game, we have scored a lot of runs and for the most part our defense has been sound. We need to get more consistent with our pitching."The Tigers brought in junior Dakota Hamm in the sixth. He allowed only one run on three hits in two innings.In the home seventh, JT loaded the bases with no outs on three straight singles by McElmoyle, Will Kovelenko and Everitt, but Hamm retired the next three batters to secure the win for Northwestern."Even when were down big, the effort was there in the last inning," said Reis. "We have had too many problems breaking down defensively. Just a few games ago we played tough against Tamaqua, but then we slipped again. We just need some breaks and a couple of wins and we will be fine. There is definitely talent here. Right now the challenge for us is to change a losing culture at Thorpe and as our team theme says, 'restore the tradition' to when the players had pride in playing for this school, which resulted in years of winning baseball."For Northwestern, not only the present looks good, but so does the future."We only start two seniors," said Smith, "and all our pitchers are underclassmen so we are definitely working on something special here."Northwestern 233 500 0 - 13 9 2Jim Thorpe 300 100 1 - 5 7 5Storm, Hamm (6) and Breidinger; McCullough and Everitt. Everitt (5) and Saez.. W - Storm. L - McCullough.