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Friday's 5-4 win over Northwestern put the Hoosiers in a good spot to win their first conference series of the season. However, two inconsistent, ugly efforts in back-to-back days saw Indiana starting their Big Ten schedule on the wrong foot.

Jeff Mercer would not give his starter Nathan Stahl a long leash Sunday afternoon. After walking three consecutive hitters, Mercer would turn to lefty Ryan Kraft to eat some serious innings. Kraft would be greeted with a grand slam from Northwestern catcher JC Santini in just his second batter faced.

This would be the first of many dents Northwestern would put in Sunday's score. Northwestern scored 10 of their 13 runs with two outs, leading Indiana head coach Jeff Mercer to emphasize how it's key to execute the pitch you want to execute in that situation, with the game practically on the line.

The Hoosiers left much to be desired in that area on Sunday afternoon.

"It's when there's two guys on base and now you don't execute the two-strike pitch. Which is going to happen with college guys," Mercer said. "They're going to make a mistake, they're going to hang a two-strike pitch and try to throw the best breaking ball ever, and it leaks back over the middle."

As one side didn't perform at their best throughout the series, the other excelled to an extent. Hoosier hitters gave Indiana a chance to win in all three games, combining for 17 runs. But, the constant uphill battle provided by the Indiana pitchers made making any sort of progress difficult.

"Offensively we were fine. We were fine today. We had a couple chances there in the bases loaded situations and we weren't able to break through. . . We did chip away and we came back a little bit.

"I told the guys yesterday I thought we could have been better offensively. . . We came out and scored six in the ninth yesterday, and we put ourselves in a position today to be able to compete, to get back in the ballgame," Mercer said.

Matthew Ellis provided one of the few bright spots during Sunday's game, increasing his home run total to 12 on the season as he deposited one over the right-field fence.

Ellis has put together a .292 average with 34 runs batted in to pair with his power surge through the first 26 games. Mercer was very complimentary of his approach, saying he's worked a lot with Ellis.

"He's worked really, really hard to flatten his stroke out. The hard part for Matt is that he gets pitched incredibly well. He doesn't get a lot of good pitches to hit. That's difficult," Mercer said.

"You can't expand the strike zone, and you can't get away from what you do well. For him to stay true to his approach, to stay true to who he is. . . I thought he had better swings today than the rest of the weekend.

Indiana heads to Purdue this upcoming weekend for a three-game series with the Boilermakers, who up until recently getting swept by Illinois were one of the hottest teams in the country, winning 15 consecutive games to start the season.

Indiana will need to patch up their pitching struggles in order to avoid a second straight conference series loss.

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