Hoosiers head to Memphis for 2nd road tourney

The opening day butterflies are gone. \nAfter finishing its season-opening tournament 1-2, the IU baseball team hits the road this weekend for the second of four straight weekend tournaments to start the season.\nThis weekend’s games take the Hoosiers to Memphis, Tenn., where they will play Eastern Illinois on Friday afternoon, host team Memphis late Saturday afternoon and face Northern Iowa at noon Sunday.\nFollowing the season-opening games, IU is working to improve its team defense. In its first three games, the Hoosiers committed nine errors that led to seven unearned runs for their opponents.\nWith the young season just getting underway, IU coach Tracy Smith is not concerned with his team’s defensive struggles.\n“Take away the second game (against Southern Mississippi with five errors), I thought we did OK defensively,” Smith said. “I think we’ll settle in. I’ve got a lot of confidence in this team in terms of being a good defensive team.”\nAs the players ready themselves for the upcoming games, they realize that improving defensively is about the right frame of mind during games.\n“You can’t ever be thinking about making errors,” sophomore center fielder Andrew Means said. “You just go out there and play the game. We have to practice hard and not worry about making those mistakes so that next time we can just go out and play.” \nPlaying farther north than most of their early season competition, the Hoosiers face an odd disadvantage. Since team practices started in early February, IU has been forced to practice indoors on the turf in Mellencamp Pavilion.\nSmith does not use the turf as an excuse for his team’s errors, but he admits playing on grass and turf is different and requires an adjustment period.\n“How do you simulate a game when we’re in here hitting ground balls off a turf football field?” Smith said during practice this week. “Really, our mistakes came from ground balls that bounced differently off the dirt than they would off turf. Two months fielding ground balls off of turf, you’re going to have some habits. It’s just a matter of us getting used to playing outside again.”\nAs the team focuses on improving defensively, the Hoosiers can rely on two starting pitchers that turned in strong performances in their first starts. In a no-decision against Troy, junior Doug Fleenor rebounded from a shaky first two innings to go six innings while allowing eight hits and one earned run.\nLate last Saturday, sophomore Tyler Tufts went the distance in leading IU to its first win of the season.\nSmith will count on the two to start Friday and Saturday’s games and then make a decision for Sunday’s starter this weekend. The second-year coach and his staff are still sorting out this young team’s identity and individual roles.\n“We’re still trying to figure it out with a lot of the young guys on the mound, but those roles will define themselves over the next two weeks,” Smith said.\nSophomore pitcher Joe Vicini thinks the pitching staff will figure things out sooner rather than later.\n“We know that we’re good or we wouldn’t be here,” Vicini said. “We have a good (pitching) staff, and that we’re going to go out and perform.”