Baseball team looks to climb out of conference basement in 4-game series

After dropping its last five contests, the IU baseball team (15-18) will head east Friday as it battles conference foe Penn State (11-21).\nIU coach Tracy Smith said he doesn’t know where his team ranks in the Big Ten and doesn’t want to know.\nThis is understandable as his team will carry a 4-8 conference record into the four-game series and is currently knotted with the Nittany Lions and Iowa for last place in the Big Ten.\n“We are going to turn this around and be firing on all cylinders,” Smith said. “My preference is if we are going to be playing our best baseball, I’d like it to be as we head into the Big Ten Tournament.”\nOnly the top six teams get into the conference tournament, and it starts May 21, so the Hoosiers need to break their losing streak soon.\nWith a team ERA at 6.04, many of the Hoosiers’ losses have come because of poor pitching. But after letting up 47 runs to the Hawkeyes last weekend, the Cream and Crimson allowed only five runs each in the team’s two midweek outings.\n“The staff as a whole has been struggling the last couple weeks and we really weren’t sure what was going on,” said sophomore pitcher Chris Squires, who worked two scoreless innings during Wednesday’s 5-2 loss to Ball State. “Lately, with Lousiville (Tuesday) night and Ball State (Wednesday), it seems like we are pitching a lot better.”\nThe announced starting pitcher for Friday’s game, sophomore Matt Bashore, hopes to leave the pitching woes well behind the Hoosiers for their next game.\nThe left-hander has been the team’s ace all season. After getting banged up in a hitters-friendly, windy battle against Iowa where he surrendered seven earned runs, Bashore’s ERA stands 2.72, still good for fourth in the Big Ten.\nSupporting Bashore will be one of the top-hitting offenses in the Big Ten with a conference-leading batting average at .329, the most hits at 372 and the second-most runs scored with 223.\nLately, the offense has sputtered, however, scoring only six runs in the last two games when it averages more than that a game.\n“We’ll be fine,” junior outfielder Chris Hervey said after Wednesday’s contest, a game in which the Hoosiers grounded into five double plays. “Our offense is good enough. We aren’t going to score 13 runs a game, but pitching has been coming around so six should be good enough.”\nThe Hoosiers will look to piece together both their hitting and pitching to earn a win for the first time in five games when their first of four games at Penn State starts at 6:35 p.m. Friday.