THREE THINGS WE LEARNED THIS WEEK
1 - IU baseball head coach Jeff Mercer joins rare company.
In completing a weekend sweep of Rutgers, Mercer became the first coach since Minnesota's John Anderson in 1982 to win a Big Ten regular season title in their first year. That's according to 10innings.com's Chris Webb, who penned this terrific writeup of Mercer in the wake of this weekend's development.
Anderson is in the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, became the 10th-youngest coach to reach 1,000 wins and is Minnesota's all-time winningest coach.
Not a bad coach to repeat history after.
Indiana now owns the No. 1 seed in next week's double-elimination conference tournament at T.D. Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Nebraska and will open with Nebraska.
2 - Sustained success for IU women's rowing at the Big Ten championships.
Three third-place finishes helped the program secure its sixth-consecutive top five finishes at the event. Overall, the Hoosiers secured fifth place with 98 team points behind bronze medal efforts from the Second Varsity 8, First Varsity Four and First Novice 8.
The First Varsity Four's Time of 7:23.147 set a new school record for best finish, while the Second Varsity 8's 6:39.971 marked its best finish since the 2015-16 season.
Junior Abigail Bogovich of the First Varsity Eight was named to the All-Big Ten First Team while teammate Madison Wright earned All-Big Ten Second Team honors. Maggie Bornhorst received the team's Big Ten Sportsmanship award winner.
Up next is the NCAA Tournament Selection Show, set to begin Tuesday at 5 p.m. eastern time.
3 - IU wrestling has decorated in-state signees entering the fold this year.
Asa Garcia (Avon, Ind.), Cayden Rooks (Columbus East, Ind.) and Nick South (Columbus East, Ind.) all picked up All-America honors from Wrestling USA.
A total of four Indiana high school wrestlers that were recognized, which also speaks to the talent.
Garcia, Rooks and South finished with a combined high school record of 458-29 and seven state championships.
The class as a whole is ranked No. 16 in the country by The Open Mat.
TWO QUESTIONS
1 - Where will IU women's golf finish at the NCAA championships this week?
The Hoosiers are currently tied for 22nd entering the final round. Staying there would set a new best finish for head coach Clint Wallman, who guided IU to 24th in the program's last NCAA championship appearance in 2007.
2 - Will IU baseball's hitting approach be feast or famine at T.D. Ameritrade Park?
According to College World Series data collected by the Omaha World-Herald, there have been 91 home runs among 1,923 hits at T.D. Ameritrade park since it opened in 2011. Not exactly an encouraging stat for the nation's leader in total home runs.
While it's also not an apples-to-apples comparison when it comes to postseason play, it's enough evidence that a ton of discipline is going to be required to have success at the stadium next week.
ONE PREDICTION -- Indiana baseball goes 2 for 2 and wins the Big Ten tournament.
As much as the park's setup doesn't play to Indiana's biggest strength, I think the Hoosiers figure out a way to win the tournament crown after how they managed the pressure of last weekend.
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