Indiana baseball (2-1) travels to Knoxville to take on undefeated Tennessee (4-0) this weekend, looking to build on last week's 2-1 opening-weekend series win at Memphis. All games can be followed via live audio streams which are linked below. Here's the schedule, weather permitting:
• Game 1: Friday, 4:30 p.m. ET - LIVE STREAM LINK
• Game 2: Saturday, 2 p.m. ET - LIVE STREAM LINK
• Game 3: Sunday, 1 p.m. ET - LIVE STREAM LINK
Here are four storylines to watch heading into IU's second series of the season.
1. Cracking Tennessee's pitching staff
The Volunteers' arms have kept opponents in check so far, holding them to a .118 batting average while averaging 10.8 strikeouts per nine innings. They also rank ninth nationally in strikeout-to-walk ratio (6.40) and are the only team in the country that hasn't allowed a run this season. Opponents haven't gotten anyone past second base.
Indiana's offense, meanwhile, struck out 37 times in 101 at-bats opening weekend, so disciplined at-bats will be critical to keeping with Tennessee.
2. Potential lineup changes
This isn't a suggestion of "drastic changes" being needed or anything like that. It's more of a point of interest because while Matt Gorski starting every game in right field, Logan Kaletha in center, Matt Lloyd at first, Jeremy Houston at shortstop and Cole Barr at third, Mercer made it clear the lineup will be altered based on what the coaching staff believes gives Indiana the best matchups.
Again, it's not implying the starting lineup or the batting order will look dramatically different. But the early strong showing from Tennessee's pitching staff makes this worth keeping an eye on.
"We have talented players, we have intelligent players but we also have depth and so we need to be able to utilize all of our strengths to make sure we're maximizing our individual ability and therefore our team's ability as well," IU coach Jeff Mercer said Tuesday.
3. Continued contributions from younger players
The Memphis series saw freshmen Jake Skrine, Alex Franklin and Braydon Tucker make their collegiate debuts. Given Mercer's comments earlier this week, it wouldn't be surprising to see each of the three used situationally again at some point this weekend.
"Yeah, they did exactly what they hoped we would do," Mercer said. "Tucker comes in and gets a double-play ball right away. Kind of an unorthodox way, a line-drive double play back at him. He gets out of the jam. His next inning was good, too. He didn't make a couple of plays, and that's through no fault of - it wasn't a lack of effort, it was just baseball. But he did a good job managing that. Alex Franklin was terrific.
"And Jake Skrine did exactly what we asked him to do, come in and have good at-bats against lefties, doubles off the wall, kind of gave us a little bit of a spark there in the ninth. As he continues to grow in his maturity, I think Jake's role will expand beyond just lefties as he's able to turn on balls more naturally, has more confidence in that. But he does give us a nice matchup option against lefties, especially guys that will live middle-away, sneak one in every now and then, he's got the ability to turn on the ball. Gives us a matchup option so we don't have to put guys in poor situations.
"They were all terrific, they've all shown those things and expect them to continue to do that."
4. More rotating at left and second?
This goes back to Mercer's comments about playing matchups. Unless he believes one player at each position will give IU the strongest defensive lineup the whole weekend, he could very well be content with continuing to rotate.
Senior Cade Bunnell started at second in Game 2 while sophomore Justin Walker got the nod in games 1 and 3 opening weekend. In left field, Mercer went through a trio of sophomores in Elijah Dunham (Game 1), Sam Crail (Game 2) and Drew Ashley (Game 3).
"I thought the production was fine," Mercer said. "At this point, the ability to play high-level defense is the most important thing. As we grow offensively, kind of get back to what we've done more so over the last 8 or 9 months, I expect those positions to be more productive."
----
• Talk about it inside The Hoops Forum or The Football Forum
• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes
• Follow us on Twitter: @IndianaRivals
• Like us on Facebook.
