4/8/2018 baseball Edit

Hoosiers Claim Series From Boilermakers In Extras

Taylor Lehman • TheHoosier

Staff

Don't miss out on any of our exclusive football, basketball and recruiting coverage. Click here to get your 30-day free trial!

IU junior Matt Lloyd went 0-for-6 at the plate but pitched the last five innings to warn the win against Purdue on Sunday, 7-5. (IU Athletics)

After IU’s 14-1 win over Purdue in Game Two on Saturday, IU manager Chris Lemonis said the game could’ve gotten “bad,” as starter Pauly Milto was able to get out of a bases loaded, no out situation early in the game.

Sunday’s starter, sophomore Cam Beauchamp, got out of the exact same situation in the third inning, allowing the second run of the game. But unlike Saturday, it still got worse for the Hoosiers.

Kruger surrendered a leadoff double in the fourth inning, advanced the Purdue runner with a wild pitch and allowed him to score on a groundout. It wasn’t until freshman shortstop Justin Walker committed a throwing error to allow another baserunner that freshman Connor Manous replaced Beauchamp and then surrendered two more runs before the end of the inning to extend the deficit to 5-1.

The Hoosiers fought their way back though, to tie the game at 5-5 and push the series finale into th e13th inning, when junior outfielder Logan Kaletha knocked a towering flyball over the fence for a 2-run home run and the series victory, 7-5.

“That was probably one of the best team wins we’ve had right there,” Kaletha said. “Honestly, Matt Lloyd is probably the best baseball player I’ve ever played with.”

After IU scratched and clawed its way back into the game with two RBI singles from freshman shortstop Justin Walker and freshman infielder Elijah Dunham and eventually a game-tying home run over the right field fence from sophomore Scotty Bradley in the seventh inning, Lemonis shifted Lloyd to the mound from second base.

Lloyd hadn’t pitched since March 18 and was making his fifth pitching appearance of the season. Along with teh pitching change, Lemonis moved Walker to second base and slotted sophomore infielder Jeremy Houston at shortstop, where Houston — a mainstay at the position as a freshman in 2017 — had been temporarily demoted in favor of Walker due to Walker’s strong play in the Butler series a weekend ago.

Lloyd continued to pitch, inning after inning, until he amassed 5.0 innings and allowed just two hits, striking out five Purdue batters, all from the ninth inning to the 13th.

“Just as long as my team needed me, I’m going to run out there,” Lloyd said. “Fifteen innings? I’m going to run out there and compete just as hard.”

Houston, who is batting .157 and has seven errors on the season, had been sitting the bench since the second game of the Butler series, while Walker, who has been batting .350 with 10 RBIs since he began starting five games ago, had seen his struggles defensively. He surrendered the game-losing runs on an error in the ninth inning on Friday and committed his fourth error of the series early Sunday.

Houston saved the game for the Hoosiers in the 12th inning, after junior infielder Nick Evarts led off the inning with a double and stole third. Purdue’s best batter, Jacson McGowan, who had three RBIs already Sunday, shot a ground ball to the left of Houston. The shortstop ranged to his right, back-handed the ball on a sliding play and made a strong throw to first to get out of the inning.

“It fired me up,” Lloyd said. “I always have faith in him, and right off the bat, I knew he was going to make the play.”

Neither team batted well in extra innings, as IU was held hitless until the 12th inning, when it pieced together a couple singles but left the runners stranded. And throughout the entire game, several deep shots, particularly from Kaletha and Lloyd, would not clear the fence.

That was until the 13th inning.

With senior infielder Colby Stratten on second, Kaletha was dealt a 76-mile per hour, 2-2 curveball and drove it high. Purdue center fielder Skyler Hunter, who had already robbed Lloyd with a catch against the wall, gave chase but would run out of field, as the ball sailed over the left-center gap, where so many fly balls had fallen before.

“I didn’t,” Kaletha said when asked if he knew the ball was gone, “because I hit one pretty deep and it kind of just hung up there, so I just watched it the whole way and was pretty excited when it went out.”

With the series win against Purdue, IU’s overall record stretches to 22-6, while its conference record sits at 3-2. Purdue suffered its second conference loss of the season with the IU walk-off win.

While the blowout victory over Purdue on Saturday seemed like a stronghold for IU, Lemonis said that game was even a couple plays from getting out of hand early on. Each game was close and called upon different players, Lemonis said, which displayed what Lemonis considers his team’s greatest strength — depth.

“As a game like that is going on on a Sunday, we’re running guys out like Cal Krueger, Matt Lloyd. I’ve got BJ Sabol that doesn’t pitch on the weekend. He’s been as good as anybody. Who’s bringing in Jeremy Houston to make those plays? It’s hard for me to manage sometimes because you’re trying to keep them happy, but they played really well.”