A nine-run lead vanished in the blink of an eye as Indiana baseball struggled with pitching in its weekend series with USC.
In Friday’s game, the Hoosiers’ offense came out with a bang as freshman infielder Jake Hanley continued a strong start to his first collegiate season by mashing a two-run home run to put Indiana up 2-0 early. The lead increased to 3-0 by the time the third inning was over.
However, as the game went on, Indiana’s pitching began to falter — a familiar story for much of the season. USC managed to tie the game in the fourth inning thanks to three consecutive solo home runs. From there, Indiana redshirt senior pitcher Gavin Seebold gave up seven earned runs and nine hits as the Hoosiers dropped the first game of the series 10-5.
Indiana made sure that the second game would not be a repeat of the first, though, as the Hoosiers secured a 13-6 win setting up a pivotal rubber match on Sunday.
In Sunday’s game, things initially seemed nearly perfect for Indiana. The Hoosiers’ offense came out hot and by the end of the fifth inning, they led 12-3.
However, after that inning was over, the tide slowly began to turn in favor of USC. The Trojans put up four runs in the top of the sixth to cut the Hoosiers’ lead to seven. Over the next three innings, Indiana gave up seven more runs and found their seemingly insurmountable lead all but vanished.
USC went up 13-12 heading into the bottom of the ninth. Indiana had one last chance to potentially steal a win after giving up the lead, but it could not put up another run as the Trojans took home the win and the series.
While the offense had a productive weekend for the most part, the pitching was a different story. Over the weekend, Indiana gave up 29 total runs and 40 total hits. In Sunday’s game, the pitching staff gave up 12 earned runs and 11 hits alone. The use of so many arms played a role, as the Hoosiers played 12 different pitchers in some capacity over the three games.
“We knew it was going to be a tough back half of the game, from the standpoint of going out against a really good offense,” Indiana head coach Jeff Mercer said Sunday “You knew that was going to happen, you just hope, with the lead, you can outpace them and outrun them, and we didn’t do that.”
Following the series loss, Mercer said he felt that he did not do well enough to put his players in the best possible position to succeed, and he shouldered much of the blame for the series defeat and for Sunday’s blown lead.
“I just told them, I said, ‘Listen, it stinks,’” Mercer said. “I’m not saying I don’t feel the same way they feel. To be in a position to win a series against a really good team like that, it’s hard to do. And to be there and to have it get away from you is really hard.”
Mercer said that the sting of the loss will be felt for a little bit, but he urged that the key was to assess how the team can be better and then move forward from there.
“Dinner’s going to taste bad, and breakfast is going to taste bad, and probably lunch is going to taste bad, too, by tomorrow night,” Mercer said. “You just have to move on. You have to move forward. Your assessment of what went wrong and why we weren’t able to be successful, and then advance yourself and move forward.”
Indiana will be back in action at 6 p.m. Tuesday against the University of Louisville at Bart Kaufman Field in Bloomington. The game will be broadcast on the Big Ten Network.
