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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

sports

IU travels to the College of Charleston for three game series

Freshman Larry Crisler practices his batting swing during practice on Wednesday at Bart Kaufman Field.

Last weekend didn’t go as planned for the IU baseball team, who lost to Presbyterian College and Furman before beating Xavier in its final game of the weekend.

This weekend, IU (3-3) will travel to Charleston, S.C., where it plays the College of Charleston in a three-game series.

“We didn’t feel good (last) weekend going home with losses to two lesser opponents, teams we should’ve beaten,” senior pitcher Luke Harrison said. “I don’t want to keep thinking about losing to Furman and Presbyterian.”

The trip to Charleston is welcomed by the players who want to move past the previous series, and also by IU Coach Chris Lemonis, who is from Charleston.

“Going back is good and bad,” Lemonis said. “It’s fun to go back home, but there’s a lot of people back home. Everybody reaches out to you for ticket requests, but it’s a good thing. You like to see friends and family. I’m excited.”

One of his former players is on the Cougars’ coaching staff, which made it to the Super Regionals of the NCAA Tournament last year before losing to Texas Tech.

“They got everyone back except for two guys, so it’s a veteran team,” Lemonis said. “They got a nice plan. They pitch, they play defense, little bit of power, little bit of speed. They know how to play the game the right way. There are going to be some fun games.”

The Hoosiers will start junior Scott Effross on Friday for the third time this season. He has allowed two earned runs in 12 innings pitched.

Junior Christian Morris will pitch Saturday, and sophomore Jake Kelzer will start Sunday. Both pitchers will make their third starts of the season.

College of Charleston is expected to start Taylor Clarke, Eric Bauer and Nathan Helvey against IU. All three have made two starts this season and have ERAs under 3.90.

In their last three games, the Hoosiers have committed eight errors, five of which came against Presbyterian. Lemonis wasn’t about to make any excuses.

“We learned we need to play good defense to win,” Lemonis said. “I think that’s the biggest thing. We just didn’t perform well. We’re going to get back down there and try to get playing well again. It was one of those games where we just didn’t take care of the baseball, and hopefully we got it out of our system.”

Harrison, who has been a major part of the bullpen, said the players want to give their coach three wins as he returns home and that the Hoosiers still have a lot of work to do after last ?weekend.

“We’re disappointed with the results,” Harrison said. “I think it’s a good learning experience early on in the year. The win (against Xavier) showed that we still had fight, we didn’t want to go 0-3 and it’s going to help us prepare for College of Charleston.”

The Cougars (4-2) are no slouch of an opponent, ?having already beaten No. 12 South Carolina on the road once this season.

Friday and Saturday’s games will start at 3 p.m., and Sunday’s game will start at noon.

“We have some improvement to do. One of our strong points is defense and we didn’t show that last weekend,” sophomore outfielder/first baseman Craig Dedelow said. “But we’ll definitely bounce back this weekend.”

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