Indiana Baseball Earns No. 2 Seed In Louisville Regional
Indiana's NCAA tournament plans are set.
The Hoosiers earned the No. 2 seed in the Louisville regional and will face third-seeded Illinois State Friday at 2 p.m. eastern time at Jim Patterson Stadium.
The winner of that contest will advance to face the winner of No. 1 Louisville vs. No. 4 University of Illinois-Chicago on Saturday.
"It's certainly exciting. This time of the year is always a lot of fun," IU head coach Jeff Mercer said. "Fortunately for us, both at Indiana and the programs that I've been at in the past, have been in a lot of tournaments. You kind of have an idea of what to expect. It's exciting, but it's also to be expected. That's what we work every day for. Looking forward to going out and putting our best foot forward."
IU was one of five Big Ten programs to earn an NCAA bid, joining Ohio State, Michigan, Nebraska and Illinois.
Indiana captured the Big Ten regular season title and led the conference and nation in home runs with 90. However, it carries a two-game losing streak into the NCAA tournament after falling to Iowa and Minnesota in last week's Big Ten tournament.
"I don't really know exactly (what went wrong at the Big Ten tournament), to be honest with you," Mercer said. "We have been a polarizing team throughout the whole season, and it's usually, you look at it, to be completely honest, we'll get right, we'll get where we need to be at and we'll play well for a couple weeks, and then we do some knucklehead things and we have go back and get back to the basics and remind everybody what we have to do. Watch a bunch of video. Have some difficult conversations.
“Then we usually go out and get back to ourselves a little bit. But it is – it’s frustrating to be polarizing, to have the ebb and the flow of it, but that’s also the challenge of coaching … it’s our responsibility to get those things right."
Illinois State finished No. 26 in the RPI after a 34-24 overall record and 14-7 mark in Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) play. The Redbirds shared the league title with Dallas Baptist. The Hoosiers, meanwhile, were No. 33 in the RPI following a 36-21 overall record and 17-7 mark in Big Ten play.
"I haven't (seen) much (of them) yet," Mercer said. "I know the coach there has done a terrific job. You look at their production this year, the jump that they've made, so obviously they're gonna be good. I know they can run, have some athletes, they really hit. Their Friday guy is a lefty, if he were to throw against us, has good numbers. Is more of a pitchability guy, which we've struggled with in the past, so we're gonna have to go out and be good.
"I know they're going to be really well coached. You don't go out and win in the Missouri Valley. It's a terrific conference. What'd they put three or four teams in? I don't know it off the top of my head. They're a really, really good conference, and they're going to be really well prepared. Their coach has had a lot of success where he's been, and he obviously has with this team too. They're gonna be excellent."
Indiana's rotation for the weekend is still to be determined.
"A lot of it will depend upon what the breakdown says with the matchups for our opponents," Mercer said. "I guess if you were going to take one positive from our poor performance last weekend, it’s that now we really have the flexibility to do whatever we want with whoever we want. Any matchup."
Below are notable RPI wins for both clubs, each of which collected five.
Illinois State:
• No. 1 Vanderbilt
• No. 24 Indiana State (once in the regular season, once in the Big Ten)
• No. 25 Dallas Baptist
• No. 28 Illinois
Indiana:
• No. 24 Indiana State
• No. 28 Illinois
• No. 29 UConn
• No. 39 Michigan (twice in the regular season)
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