IU clinches Big Ten title outright

The rain started just as Christian Morris hurled the first pitch and continued on and off throughout the night.

The slippery conditions caused a combined seven errors between IU (37-13, 20-3) and Minnesota (27-21, 13-10). The Hoosiers won 7-3 thanks to timely throwing errors by the Gophers.

“It’s baseball,” shortstop Nick Ramos said. “You gotta go out and play in all kinds of weather. Today definitely wasn’t ideal at all.”

Bart Kaufman Field is all-field turf, meaning there is no natural grass on the diamond. When rain mixes with the turf, players slide longer and the field becomes slicker.

“It’s tougher to slide, it’s tougher to run, it’s tougher to pick up a baseball,” IU Coach Tracy Smith said. “But it was also tough for the other team. It was kind of a sloppy game.”

IU scored three unearned runs on the night, which was the biggest sequence coming in the bottom of the fourth inning.

After Scott Donley and Dustin DeMuth led off the inning with flyouts to left field, Brad Hartong knocked a two-out double to right center. Will Nolden walked, and Nick Ramos singled up the middle to drive in Hartong from second base.

With runners on second and third and two outs, Tim O’Conner grounded to the Minnesota shortstop for what should have been a routine ground ball. But Connor Schaefbauer’s throw to first went wide and careened into the outfield.

Both Nolden and Ramos scored on the play, and the Hoosiers built a comfortable four-run lead. The Gophers would tack on another run in the seventh inning but never got close again after the fourth.

Not only was the rain a factor, but when the first pitch was thrown, the wind chill was 44 degrees. By the time the game ended at 11:14 p.m., the players had been on the field for three hours and nine minutes.

Smith said the cold weather wasn’t a factor for the pitchers. He said they were the warmest on the team. Position players and coaches who have to stand around are the ones who suffer the cold the most.

“It’s the guys with snot running down their noses like me who are cold all night,” Smith said. “But the pitchers are the easiest guys to stay warm because they’re active.”

Smith said during the last two games, the team has been flat because of possibly thinking about postseason play ahead of them.

That lack of concentration only got worse, he said, when it was announced on the loud speaker during the game that the Hoosiers had officially won the Big Ten outright.

In the bottom of the sixth inning of the game in Bloomington, Illinois beat Nebraska in Lincoln, Neb., 5-1. Smith said his team was slap happy after the announcement, and they would have to regain the focus needed to excel down the stretch.

But the mood wasn’t all gloom because the Hoosiers had clinched consecutive regular season Big Ten titles for the first time in the school’s 119-year program history.

Both Smith and the players said the conference title is of great importance and significance to them.

“For me, personally, it’s pretty cool because I think back to nine years ago,” Smith said. “Coming over here a lot of people said, ‘You cannot win in Indiana.’

"And the fact that these guys are two-time, back-to-back champions at Indiana is pretty cool. Pretty gratifying.”