Three Takeaways From Indiana Baseball's 9-7 Regional Loss To Louisville

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Despite a late rally, Indiana was eliminated from the NCAA tournament with a 9-7 regional loss to host Louisville Sunday afternoon at Jim Patterson Stadium.

Here are three things that stood out from the Hoosiers' season-ending loss.

Though IU's comeback effort was admirable, it wouldn't have been necessary had they converted with runners on.

The most glaring example of this was the top of the third inning, when a Cade Bunnell walk, Drew Ashley single and Matt Lloyd single loaded the bases with zero outs only to see a pair of strikeouts and a fly out from the next three batters.

Louisville turned around and added two runs in the bottom of the third to extend its lead to six.

Overall, the Hoosiers were 6 for 20 with runners on compared to the Cardinals' 8 for 16. IU was 4 for 15 with runners in scoring position to Louisville's 4 for 9.

"The game was decided on the details of the game," IU head coach Jeff Mercer said. "Our inability early to hit with runners in scoring position. Some of our ... defensive miscues. They weren't necessarily errors. We threw to the advancing base again today to allow the back side guy to move up. We had a runner on second base, the runner is stealing third, we took too long to get rid of the ball at second base to first base, and they advanced to home plate.

"You have the details of the program and you have to be able to not only build the fundamentals of it, but the details inside of the game."

Indiana's starting pitching just didn't have it, which is uncharacteristic in the context of the season.

Starter Tanner Gordon was chased out of Sunday's game after allowing five earned runs off five hits and producing zero strikeouts in 2 1/3 innings. All-American lefty Andrew Saalfrank lasted just 3 1/3 innings with three earned runs off seven its and only two strikeouts Saturday against Illinois-Chicago in IU's first elimination game. Friday night starter Pauly Milto had seven earned runs off 14 hits with just two strikeouts in 5 1/3 innings in the Hoosiers' regional-opening loss to Illinois State.

For Gordon, the outing tied for his second-shortest start of the season. Saalfrank had his fourth-shortest start in 12 overall, having gone six or more innings in eight of them. Milto tied for his shortest start, having gone at least six innings in all but one of his prior 15 starts.

"I think at the beginning o f the weekend I would've said more just the motions of the moment," Mercer said. "We didn't handle the emotions of the moment well. Something we did a better job of today, but it still held us back in the end because we didn't execute early in the game. If you look at it statistically, every pitch is of equal value. The first pitch and the last pitch. There's no different value in those pitches. We had to handle the moment better.

"Those guys, they work really hard, they have good stuff. Scouting reports get out, word gets out. We have to continue to diversify pitches, and you have to execute those things, and understand it's easier to build an offense over the course of a season than it is to build a pitching staff over the course of a season, because you only have so many bullets. You run out of bullets and the stuff's not quite as good or you don't execute quite as well, or everyone gets to watch videos and have scouting reports to put together a game plan and attack that game plan."

"Our starting pitching, I don't want to be disrespectful. It's good. We had an All-American. They have really good stuff. But baseball is changing. It's evolving. IF it's not 94-96, 94-97 with a wipeout (pitch), then it's going to be hard to sustain over three, four months of time."

While Indiana had the talent to be competitive in this weekend's regional, more is still needed when it comes to strength and conditioning according to Mercer.

"We have to become more physical," Mercer said. "We have to be bigger and stronger, faster and have to have more electric stuff on the mound. We have to have more dominant stuff on the mound. We have to be able to go toe-to-toe, athlete-for-athlete. If you look at it, the bigger, faster, stronger team normally wins. That's just the way of the world. That's the way of sports. If it's in basketball, if it's in football, if it's in baseball. We have to get more athletic. The fundamentals of the game, which I think we've done a good job of building that base of it, have to be built upon and understood and applied. But the reality of it is, we just have to get better physically in all areas of the game to allow ourselves to focus more on the details and the fundamentals of it."

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