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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

sports baseball

Bats fall silent as IU loses Big Ten tournament opener

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MINNEAPOLIS — Sophomore Austin Cangelosi tossed his bat toward the dugout, a symbol of not only his frustration, but the frustration of all the Hoosiers on ?Wednesday.

Cangelosi had just popped out weakly to Michigan closer Jacob Cronenworth, finalizing a 4-1 defeat to the Wolverines in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament.

IU managed just four hits in the game, none with runners in scoring position.

“I would have liked to have seen us compete a little bit more offensively, get a big hit,” IU Coach Chris Lemonis said. “I felt like there was times in the middle of the game where we needed to get the run in from third with less than two outs, get an RBI hit. But we just couldn’t get that big hit today.”

Three times the Hoosiers had a runner on second base with nobody out. Twice the Hoosiers had runners on first and second with nobody out.

But aside from the seventh inning, when IU managed its lone run on an RBI groundout, nothing came of these situations. In the fifth inning, freshman outfielder Logan Sowers led off the inning with a double down the left field line for IU’s first hit of the game. What followed were two groundouts and a flyout to strand Sowers in scoring position. It was the most pressure the Hoosiers would put on Michigan starting pitcher Brett Adcock all game. Adcock won his ninth game of the season after pitching 6.1 innings, allowing one run on three hits while striking out six Hoosiers.

“He was just throwing a lot of first pitch fastballs for strikes, and we just were watching them,” Sowers said. “We just weren’t swinging the bat. We just have to do a better job of jumping on fastballs early.”

Sowers had two of IU’s four hits Wednesday, with both coming against Adcock. In the seventh inning, Sowers led off the inning with a single to right field against Adcock, who was chased from the game later in the inning. Sowers scored the only run for the Hoosiers later in the inning, but considering the situation, IU could have had more.

Senior Luke Harrison started on the mound for the Hoosiers, pitching four innings while allowing three hits on 63 pitches. But one of those pitches was a curveball left up to Michigan’s Johnny Slater. A curveball that allowed three Wolverines to cross the plate.

“I threw him a curveball and just left it over the plate,” Harrison said. “I think he was sitting on it. It wasn’t the worst pitch, but he put a good swing on it.”

Slater was sitting on the off speed pitch, he said, and was just able to put enough aluminum on the ball to send it over the 30-foot wall in right field.

But other than Slater’s line drive into the empty bleachers in right field, the Wolverines couldn’t do much against Harrison.

They also couldn’t manage much against sophomore Jake Kelzer, who pitched four innings of relief to finish the game, allowing one run. Kelzer’s performance allowed the rest of the bull pen to remain rested, setting the Hoosiers up nicely to make a run out of the loser’s side of the bracket, ?Lemonis said.

“I’m confident in our team,” Lemonis said. “I think we can get on a roll and play well, and we’ve done that lately. I’m excited to see them respond tomorrow.”

Lemonis said he didn’t even bother yelling at his team after the loss. He said the Hoosiers know they need to play better and know how to respond Thursday morning.

IU has already been through a stretch in which it lost eight of 10 games. IU responded to that slide by winning nine of its next 10.

“I think that’s the chiseled part of us is that we’ve been punched in the nose more than once,” Lemonis said. “We’ve responded all year, so hopefully they’ll wake up tomorrow ready to play hard.”

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