2nd-day win guarantees Hoosiers weekend Big Ten play

An IU baseball team that two years ago had collectively never seen Big Ten Tournament action is making things look pretty easy so far in this one.

After opening the tournament with a 9-1 win over Purdue, the Hoosiers lit up the scoreboard a second time with a 12-3 win against Minnesota, one of just two teams seeded higher than them.

Every starter in IU’s lineup had a hit, and six had multi-hit games, but left-hander Matt Bashore’s performance on the mound meant most of it was just a plus.

Following Eric Arnett’s stellar outing Wednesday, Bashore made his case for staff ace, pitching seven innings and striking out nine while carrying a no-hitter into the fifth inning. The southpaw’s work Thursday was his latest impressive conference outing – Bashore went 5-1 with a 2.36 ERA in seven Big Ten starts coming into Thursday.

“He was in total control of the game from the first pitch to the last pitch that he was in there,” IU coach Tracy Smith said of his starter’s performance Thursday.

Offensively, the Hoosiers spread things out.

Brian Lambert finished 3-for-6, Jake Dunning 3-for-5 and Tyler Rogers 3-for-4, and six different Hoosiers registered RBI.

Smith’s club got things going early, plating two runs in the first when Josh Phegley singled home Lambert and moved Jerrud Sabourin to third. Kipp Schutz singled Sabourin in before Minnesota starter Chauncy Handran worked out of the inning.

He could not avoid twice the trouble an inning later, when the Hoosiers plated four runs on five hits – a single sandwiched between two pairs of doubles – to put the game beyond reach rather quickly.

Bashore cruised, and IU tacked on runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth before the Tipp City, Ohio, native gave way to the bullpen.

Minnesota scored three in that inning but couldn’t close the game further, and IU added a run in the ninth and strolled through to the third game of the winner’s bracket in the Big Ten Tournament.

Entering last year’s tournament, no Hoosier player or coach had been to a Big Ten Tournament since Smith took over in 2005. That year, the Hoosiers lost their first game but won the next three, advancing to the weekend before being eliminated.

Thursday’s win guarantees a return trip to those weekend games, and IU is just one win away from playing for the Big Ten title. The team will face the winner of Thursday’s nightcap between Ohio State and Illinois.

Blake Monar, IU’s left-handed breaking ball specialist and third regular weekend starter, will take the hill tomorrow. He was 4-3 with a 4.82 ERA in 12 starts this year.

Smith said the Hoosiers will need a strong outing from Monar if they want to keep winning and, almost as importantly, preserving a bullpen that’s only had to work four innings over the first two games of the tournament.

 “The key to all this is going to be how deep you are on the hill,” Smith said of the tournament. “There’s a lot of baseball left to play in this thing, and it’s key for us to get a quality start out of Monar.”