More than a ‘minotaur’

Standing Thursday in Mellencamp Pavilion, IU coach Tracy Smith recited a 3-year-old memory.\n“I remember it was in here,” Smith said. “He came in and was like, ‘Coach, I played some baseball in high school and I would like to try out.’”\nSo the coach gave the freshman a chance. The team was running 60-yard dashes, and Smith said he wanted to see if the recruit could run.\n“And then he beat Reggie Watson and Jay Brandt, who were our two really fast guys on the team,” Smith said. “So I said, ‘All right, I think we might have a spot for you.’”\nThree years later, that freshman has morphed into junior center fielder Andrew Means. \nMeans, who came to IU to play football, approached Smith in Mellencamp Pavilion after sitting out his freshman football season because of a shoulder injury he sustained in practice.\n“I had some down time to think about my freshman year and not being able to make a name for myself,” the Avon Lake, Ohio, native recalled. “I decided to approach coach Smith about playing, and here we are now. Obviously, it was a good decision.”\nIn Memorial Stadium, Means is the starting wideout for the Hoosiers. He caught 48 passes for 559 yards last season, third- and second-most on the team, respectively.\nBut on the diamond of Sembower Field, Means is an imposing center fielder and lead-off man. Listed at 6-foot-1 and 215 pounds, he is built for the rigors of a college football season.\n“We called him ‘the minotaur,’” Smith said. “Half man with the bull upper body. Yes, he is a minotaur.”\nFreshman outfielder Kipp Schutz said he did not think of his friend as a minotaur, but rather as something less imposing. \n“You look at him, he’s a big tough guy, but he is really just like a little teddy bear,” Schutz said. “I always tell him that because he is always singing or something in the locker room.”\nMeans said Schutz’s assessment was probably because his personality differs from his stature.\n“For those people that know me, they know I am a teddy bear on the inside,” he said. “For those that don’t know me, all they see is the big, strong, muscle pictures online. Deep down I am just a nice kid trying to lead these kids to a Big Ten championship.”\nSmith was unsure at first about Schutz’s \ndescription.\n“Kipp called him a teddy bear?” Smith asked. “I guess, I guess he is a big, muscular teddy bear.”\nSmith said Means is so aggressive that the Hoosiers’ coach is nervous for opposing teams’ catchers. The coach recalled a story about him barreling to home plate without being sent earlier this year.\n“He about (trucked a catcher) on his own out in California,” he said. “Thank God the throw was wild. They showed the replay on the news and it looked like it was going to be a violent collision. The guy taking the throw knows there is a base runner coming, because Andrew plays hard and slides hard.”\nAs of Tuesday, “the teddy bear” ranked first or second in the Big Ten in five different offensive categories, leading the conference with 30 hits, 24 runs scored and four triples. He is also a perfect 9-for-9 in stolen bases.\n“He is obviously a great athlete, but from last year to this year he has improved a lot,” Schutz said. “When I am out in right field, basically I have to cover only the balls that are right at me because he catches everything to my right. It’s easy to play out there with him.”\nMeans’ teammates named him a captain at the beginning of workouts, though he missed a majority of those workouts because of football.\nSmith said Means was named captain because he leads by example.\n“The kids respect a guy when they see a guy that eats right, sleeps right and studies right,” he said. “He does everything the right way and has a way of connecting with teammates even though he doesn’t get to see them as much.”\nMeans and his Hoosiers begin conference play Friday night in Minnesota, and with Means and the rest of the talent around the team, Smith said he was confident in his team’s ability to compete.