Before baseball season began, IU Coach Chris Lemonis said the proven lineup may need to provide support for the talented yet inexperienced pitching staff.
People would see the youth in the starting rotation and in the bullpen and assume the worst, Lemonis said. But that wasn’t the case during IU’s opening weekend in Arizona.
In four games played over three days, the Hoosiers scored 19 runs and allowed just nine.
However, the 10-run differential didn’t translate into a dominant weekend. IU dropped both games to No. 7 Oregon State, won both games against Gonzaga and left Arizona with a 2-2 record.
“There was some good and some bad,” Lemonis said. “I thought we played two really good games, and the games against Oregon State, I think we did some really good things but punching out in run-scoring situations is not playing winning baseball.”
In the Oregon State losses, IU had five combined opportunities with runners in scoring position where no runs were scored. Three of those opportunities stacked up against the Hoosiers in the one-run contest Friday.
Timely hits were a weekend-long issue for IU, whether it was three consecutive batters striking out after a lead-off triple or leaving junior Laren Eustace on third base twice in one game.
Sixteen Hoosier baserunners were stranded in the two losses that came by narrow finals of 1-0 and 4-1.
The wins over Gonzaga, however, showed how dangerous the IU offense can be when it’s firing on all cylinders.
On Friday evening, IU scored 12 runs on 14 hits, and Sunday, it scored five runs in a small ball contest that saw just six runs scored between the two teams.
Freshman catcher Jake Matheny, who won Big Ten Freshman of the Week for his performance this weekend, stood out among the IU bats. The freshman hit a home run in his first collegiate at-bat and another later in the Friday game against Gonzaga.
Matheny added a double Sunday and finished his first collegiate weekend with five RBIs and threw out two baserunners trying to steal second.
“We’ve got some good young players,” Lemonis said. “They’re finding their roles and figuring out the game a little bit. I think we had a couple of them come out and pitch well on the mound too.”
After graduating the entire starting rotation from a group of pitchers that combined for a 3.08 team ERA last season, Lemonis put together a young rotation for the opening weekend and every starting pitcher hurled a quality start.
Against the No. 7 Beavers, sophomore Jonathan Stiever allowed just one run and three hits in 5.2 innings pitched, while Oregon State pitcher Luke Heimlich punched out 11 Hoosier batters on his way to the win.
The remaining starters — sophomore Tim Herrin, freshman Andrew Saalfrank and junior Brian Hobbie — combined for 14 innings of work and four earned runs allowed. The bullpen only allowed two runs in the weekend.
Before the season, the only starting pitcher with any starting experience was Hobbie, who pitched three starts in 2015.
“Our pitching staff pitched really well,” Lemonis said. “We just gotta get our offense going a little bit.”
