There’s no reason for doom and gloom after one weekend, according to Marlin Ikenberry.

“We took [away] a ton of positives,” Ikenberry, the fifth-year James Madison baseball coach, said Monday during a press conference at O’Neill’s Grill in Harrisonburg.

In their opening series, the Dukes were swept by N.C. State, which moved up one spot to No. 15 in the D1Baseball.com Top 25 on Monday.

Friday and Saturday’s games were competitive before Sunday’s 11-2 runaway victory for the Wolfpack.

“That first game I was really proud of the way Nick [Stewart] held his composure,” Ikenberry said of his junior right-handed pitcher and ace of the staff. “We’d been working really hard on his changeup and he threw it, and it was very good.

“The difference in that ballgame was they put a ton of pitches in Nick and we couldn’t get that many pitches in [N.C. State starter Nick] Swiney to get him out of the game early enough.”

Stewart was done after surrendering two runs and recording eight strikeouts over four innings and throwing 108 pitches. Swiney struck out 11 over seven scoreless frames and only threw 90 pitches.

The next day, N.C. State used a five-run eighth to rally past the Dukes for a 9-6 win.

“If we make two plays – they ruled them hits,” Ikenberry said. “But I think if we make two plays in the eighth on the right side of the infield, it could be a different outcome.”

Dukes sophomore Kyle Novak picked up where he left off following a standout freshman season.

The preseason All-Colonial Athletic Association designated hitter had four hits over the weekend including a two-run double in Saturday’s contest.

“He is an advanced hitter and he can really dictate certain things at the plate,” Ikenberry said of Novak, who batted .308 in the opening series. “He does things that are unorthodox, but his hands and eyes work. He knows when he doesn’t get his good swings off and knows when he does, but he always has something to say about the opposing pitchers and the different things that they do. So he sees things a little differently than everyone else and the ball finds his barrel.”

Novak also played first base for the first time in his career in Sunday’s series finale.

JMU and its next two opponents are searching for their first wins of the year.

The Dukes play at Richmond on Tuesday, and the Spiders were swept at No. 4 Georgia over the weekend. And JMU opens its home slate Friday – with the start of a four-game set – against Quinnipiac, which lost all three game of its season-opening series at the University of Texas-San Antonio. Quinnipiac reached an NCAA regional last year.

“It’ll be a challenge,” Ikenberry said. “Our out of conference schedule is going to challenge us for our conference and part of that is bringing teams from the Northeast down here.

“You want to bring the best teams from the Northeast down here to play and prepare you for conference play.”

Ikenberry said right-handed junior Justin Showalter will start for JMU on Tuesday against the Spiders.

Showalter, a Turner Ashby graduate, threw two innings of one-run ball and struck out two in relief of Stewart on Friday in the Dukes’ season-opening loss at N.C. State.

“Don’t know how long he’s going to go,” Ikenberry said. “It’ll kind of depend on how he feels.”

Last year, Showalter went 1-3 with a 3.72 ERA as JMU’s regular mid-week starter.