Brandon Magallones slouches on a black couch, his eyes drifting off into the distance. In a green hoodie and gray sweatpants, he tries to heave out a description of the past year. The season played out in a direction far from ideal. His 5.33 ERA ranked nearly a full run higher than any other pitcher on the team. He gave up 40 walks, the most on the team. He finished tied for the most losses. It’s nothing he’s used to. Discussing it, he pauses after nearly every sentence.

“It’s hard to put it in words,” he says. “I’ve never failed that much in my life in terms of baseball.”

He stops momentarily. He scrunches his lips, exhales and then tries to label the year as a learning experience. He says failing that much will help him in the long run. But no matter what way he rips the bandage off his worst season on record, it still burns.

“It was rough,” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t know. The wins didn’t seem as sweet and the losses just hurt that much more.”

His first two years at Northwestern, Magallones anchored the starting rotation. He led the team with 67 strikeouts as a freshman. He then boasted the most wins as a sophomore with a 3.30 ERA. But after fracturing the tibia in his right leg this offseason, he lost strength in his lower body. His velocity suffered. His release point became inconsistent. And the losses started piling up.

Magallones is not one to make excuses. He’ll be the first to put the blame on himself. He is one the most competitive athletes you’ll meet. He does his best to mask it, behind a glowing white smile. But sitting on a couch, one week before the season’s over, reliving each excruciating pitch, it shows.

“I know what this feels like,” Magallones says. “I don’t want this to ever happen again.”

Magallones first threw a ball at three years old. Like any other kid, he wanted to be a professional athlete. But growing up, he didn’t stick to baseball. He played basketball and football all the way through grade school. It wasn’t until he got to high school that he decided to focus on the sport he felt he had the best chance at succeeding in.

When he chose baseball, his father, Lason, watched. Every practice. Every game. He listened to everything coaches would tell his son. After 21 years in the United States Air Force, Lason knew what discipline meant — what hard work meant. He enforced the same sternness on most aspects of his son’s lives. He made sure they always addressed elders by Mr. or Mrs. It was Yes, sir or No, sir. He made sure they looked others in the eyes while shaking hands. So, as his son committed himself to something he wanted to make his career, he extended that strictness to baseball.

“He made sure to see what I was doing and what the guy was teaching me,” Magallones says. “If I was slacking off in practice or in a game, he’d get on me and make sure I was doing it right. It was tough, because sometimes I didn’t like when he got on me.”

As a kid, he didn’t know what it took to get to where he wanted to be. Not many did. He was more worried about hanging out with friends, kicking back and relaxing during summers. But every time his father saw fit, he made sure to remind him or what he needed to do.

Get your butt in the weight room. Let’s go.

Get on the track. Start running.

Get in the basement and start lifting weights.

“The reason I was so strict was that if I am going to give you the best baseball glove, the best basketball, the best basketball shoes, the shorts, everything, all that I ask is that you give me 110 percent,” Lason says. “Everything is always like an interview. When you try out for different teams, and you try out for different sports, someone is always looking at you.”

By the time he was an upperclassman at Providence Catholic High School, he saw the extra work paying dividends. He went 8-3 as a senior, helping his team to the Class 4A state championship game. He was one of six players from the team to go to Division I schools on scholarship.

“I was, at that time, immature and I didn’t want to work hard on the thing that I loved,” Magallones says. “If I didn’t work hard, I wasn’t going to succeed and my dad knew that better than I did, so I definitely give a lot of credit to him for where I’m at right now.”

Magallones barely ever shows emotion.

After he strikes someone out, he’ll stand on the mound and wait for the next batter. He stands in the back of team huddles with his head down. He always looks calm. Collected. One time he stood behind the catcher as an outfielder gunned an opposing player at the plate. After the play, he walked back to the mound, face straight, with his right fist clenched. But while he may always look blank, if you were to stick a thermometer in his gut at anytime during the course of a game, you’d see something different.

“He has a raging volcano underneath that skin,” Northwestern head coach Paul Stevens says. “He has that ability to make it look like he’s this cool individual that just doesn’t seem to have a care in the world. But I can tell you, underneath, I can see a different side of him.”

Magallones labels his competitiveness as his defining characteristic. It’s part of how he made such a big splash at Northwestern as a freshman, becoming the first Wildcats pitcher since 1988 to start 5-0.

“That’s the driving force for him. He loves to make it personal between him and the hitter,” Stevens says. “Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But at the end of the day I never questioned the young man who was coming out to compete with everything he has every single day.”

The summer after his sophomore season, he traveled east to pitch for the Falmouth Commodores in the Cape Cod Baseball League — the same league that produces names like Jacoby Ellsbury and Mark Teixeira yearly. He was named an all-star, sporting a team-best 1.68 ERA through his first five starts. He finished the summer with a 3.45 ERA and 21 strikeouts.

Part of his success also comes from his pitching toolkit, one he’s added to over the years. He boasts a 92-90 mile-per-hour fastball. After his freshman season, he developed a slider. But his changeup, both he and his coaches agree, is his best pitch. He used it often as a freshman. It’s how he tallied so many strikeouts. When it’s working, Stevens says, it makes his fastball look 5-6 miles per hour faster.

He got away from the changeup as a sophomore but planned on using it more and more as a junior. That was until he felt a piercing sensation in his right leg.

The pain grew gradually.

Magallones thought it was shin splints at first. And it may have well started out that way. But midway through the team’s fall training, he noticed a sharp pain in his right leg — his push leg. Even at such an early point in the offseason, a slew of injuries had already hit Northwestern’s baseball team. More would come, forcing an eventual patchwork lineup that would struggle through the entire season.

Magallones didn’t want to sit. He was a captain. He led by example. He couldn’t do so riding the bench. He pushed through.

But it got worse.

And worse.

Magallones made it through his first two starts of the season before it became too much to bear. At one point, he couldn’t run to cover first base. Anytime he ran, he’d feel a sharp pain in his right shin, shooting all the way from his knee to his foot.

“I can’t even explain it,” he says. “I just knew I couldn’t deal with the pain anymore.”

An MRI revealed a high-grade stress fracture. Doctors told him his tibia could have easily snapped if he took a wrong step. Coaches scratched him from the lineup. He spent the next two weeks on his bed. He gingerly walked to class when he needed. He went through treatments. The rest of the time, he lay on his bed, drinking milk and watching Netflix. He missed just two starts, but the injury proved to be much more debilitating than missing a couple of games.

“Injuries change the way you go about things,” Stevens says. “And it may be the slightest change, but any change in a pitcher is a dramatic change. Pitching is such a fine art that anything can change the dynamics.”

Pitching comes from the legs.

That’s how Magallones approaches it. He runs 20-30 minutes after any game he pitches. He’ll run 50 50-yard sprints on the days he doesn’t. He concentrates on his lower body in the weight room. But right after coming back from the injury, doctors made sure he lifted light and trained sparse. He wasn’t completely cleared until five weeks after his MRI. During his first handful of starts back, he pushed through an unconditioned lower body. He came out of the bullpen at first, but found himself back in the starting lineup against Minnesota. He went seven innings, and gave up four runs on eight runs en route to a 5-1 loss. His next start, he gave up five runs to Penn State. Two weeks later, he gave up six runs in 5 2/3 innings to Iowa.

“He did not do the things that I know he’s capable of,” Stevens says. “We all know that he’s capable of far greater things.”

The numbers got better, slowly. But they still weren’t close to what Magallones wanted them to be. By May 9, on a brisk afternoon game against Southern Illinois, he still couldn’t find his command. He gave up three runs in the first inning. After four back-to-back scoreless frames, he opened the sixth by giving up a single on a 3-0 pitch. He tossed two wild pitches and gave up a walk before Stevens pulled him off the mound. With his head down, he trudged to the back of the dugout, past the high fives of his teammates. He found a seat on the back wall and sat, alone. He slammed down his glove next to him — the thud audible from the other side of the ballpark — hunched over and sank his forehead into his palm. He mentioned nothing about the injury after the game. He kept his answer simple.

I just need to pitch better.

On his black couch, Magallones’ eyes drift again as he searches for positives.

It’s the second to last week of the regular season. There’s one series left, one on the road against Ohio State. The Wildcats are a far cry from making the Big Ten Tournament with 17-32 record. As much as he fights it, stopping in between sentences, he goes back to labeling the year as a learning experience.

“I don’t like saying it because I don’t like losing,” he says. “And it makes it seem OK that I lost.”

After the weekend, Magallones is devoting the entire break to recovery. He isn’t pitching summer ball this year. He and his coaches decided to use the time to get the strength back in his legs. Right after he finishes finals, he’ll get on a plane headed to Boston to meet Eric Cressey, a renowned strength and conditioning specialist. He may even take a break from throwing just to focus on getting his legs back to where they need to be.

Magallones remains confident that next season will be different. Pitchers have their on and off years. He brings up Tim Lincecum, and how after back-to-back Cy Young seasons, he’s had two of his worst years to date. He knows he can get better. His coach believes the same. He sees Magallones as one of the main keys to success for the Wildcats next year. His father believes he can bounce back too. His son took every challenge he threw at him as a kid, exceeding expectations every step of the way.

This one is no different.

“I shouldn’t have let this injury bother me as much as it did,” Magallones says. “I didn’t lose any of my confidence. It probably humbled me a little more, but it definitely made me more prepared to work even harder than I did previously.”

He pauses.

“I will refuse to have another season like this.”