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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

sports

Hoosiers head to Big Ten Tournament with six straight series wins

IU baseball players watch as their players go up to bat. IU beat No. 2 Louisville 4-3 in their final home game of the regular season.

The No. 6 seeded Hoosiers finished their regular season Saturday with a series win over Ohio State. IU has now won six consecutive series, including five Big Ten series victories, to end the year with a 32-20-2 overall record.

IU will be host to the eight–team Big Ten Tournament from May 24th to May 28th at Bart Kaufman Field. The Hoosier will play in game one at 10 a.m. against last year’s conference champions, the Minnesota Golden Gophers.

There isn’t much room between the two teams in the final standings as Minnesota finished with a 15-8 conference record, while IU ended with a 14-9-1 record in Big Ten games. The Hoosiers could have received the three seed if they would have swept the Buckeyes over the weekend.

The team traveled to Columbus, Ohio and picked up two wins against Ohio State, who finished 11th in the regular season standings. IU lost game one on Thursday by a score of 4-7.

Just two days removed from defeating the second ranked Louisville Cardinals, IU struggled to carry over that momentum into the series opener against the Buckeyes. The Hoosiers only managed six hits compared to the 13 they gave up.

Three of the six hits were home runs including two from senior outfielder Craig Dedelow.

The game was Dedelow’s second multi-home run game of the season. Sophomore rightfielder Logan Sowers also had a home run along with two more hits on the night.

Ohio State held a 1-0 lead until Dedelow tied things up in top of the fifth inning. The Buckeyes responded in the bottom of the sixth by scoring five runs to take the lead again.

Despite hitting two more long balls in the seventh and ninth innings, IU failed to come back and eventually lost game 1.

The Hoosiers put Thursday’s result behind them and didn’t seem to dwell on the hitting woes for too long as they responded Friday with a 12-hit performance to give them an 8-4 victory.

Similar to game one, Ohio State started by taking a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning.

This time around, IU erased the lead with a seven-run inning in the third. This was the fourth time this season the Hoosiers scored seven or more runs in an 
inning.

The Buckeyes got three runs back in the same inning, but failed to score the rest of the game. They also had a chance to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded, but a flyout to left field ended their hopes.

Freshman first baseman Matt Gorski led the way with three hits and three RBI. Senior outfielder Alex Krupa also added three hits. Sowers continued to stay hot as he and senior infielder Tony Butler had two hits and a RBI a piece.

The third and final contest was the closest game of the series.

The Hoosiers won the game and series by 
defeating the Buckeyes by a final score of 4-3. Reigning Big Ten Freshman of the Week, pitcher Cal Krueger, picked up the win for and only allowed one earned run through his six innings of pitching.

Once again Ohio State started off by scoring one run in the bottom of the first, but this time it was to tie instead of taking an early lead.

Sowers hot hitting streak against the Buckeyes continued as he drove in Butler with a double in the top of the first.

Sowers, Butler and freshman shortstop Jeremy Houston all had two hits to account for over half of the team’s 10 total.

Sophomore infielder Matt Lloyd carried the rest of the load as he provided three hits, a RBI and the save for his 1.2 innings of relief.

IU finished its regular season by defeating last year’s Big Ten Tournament Champions, Ohio State. The Buckeyes won the conference tournament as the third seed, the same number of seed as Minnesota, Indiana’s postseason opponent this year.

The Hoosiers beat the Golden Gophers in a three-game series earlier this year at home. After dropping the first game 0-11, Indiana was able to bounce back with a 13-12 win. The Hoosiers finished the series with a 4-0 shutout.

The two teams will meet again on Wednesday for the first game of the 2017 Big Ten Tournament. If IU wins, they will play the winner of game two between No. 2 Michigan and No. 7 Northwestern at 5 p.m. on Thursday. If the Hoosiers lose though, they will play at 10 a.m. again the next day versus the loser of game two.

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