Broom mindset: IU hopes to sweep Invitational

Tracy Smith heard congratulations from all corners after taking the last of three games against No. 34 LSU last weekend. The IU baseball coach couldn’t understand - he and his team were disappointed they came back to Bloomington with only one win. \n“Our mindset was, ‘well, we screwed up,’” Smith said, referring to the fact that the Hoosiers could have taken at least one more game from the Tigers, by his estimation. \nLast weekend in Baton Rouge, the Hoosiers lost the first two games 7-1 and 5-4 before taking the Sunday afternoon match-up 7-6. Freshman lefthander Kyle Leiendecker picked up the win for the Hoosiers after pitching the last three innings and striking out three. \nThis weekend, the Hoosiers travel to Clarksville, Tenn., to play in the Austin Peay Invitational where they will take on Illinois State, host Austin Peay on Saturday and Valparaiso on Sunday. Sophomore pitcher Chris Squires left no doubt about the Hoosiers’ intentions for the weekend. \n“We’re trying to go in there and definitely sweep,” Squires said after practice Wednesday. \nFreshman infielder Jerrud Sabourin led the Hoosiers at the plate over the weekend, starting two of the three games and coming back from the LSU series with a .556 average. Redshirt freshman Kipp Schutz and sophomore Josh Phegley each went 5-for-12 on the weekend to start the season with .417 averages. \nSophomore pitcher Matt Bashore threw 4 1/3 innings in game two against LSU, striking out nine batters while surrendering just one earned run. But four errors in the game cost the Hoosiers, who surrendered three unearned runs in five, falling to the Tigers despite the late rally. \n“We kicked that ball around on Saturday,” Smith said, emphasizing that the left side of his infield needs to improve before this weekend. “We’ve got to do a better job of taking care of the baseball, particularly against very good teams.”\nSmith said the Hoosiers will have to deal with a different series dynamic than they did with LSU because IU will play three different teams once instead of one team three times. The third-year IU coach said teams often stagger their pitching differently in a weekend tournament as opposed to a series against a single team. \n“It just depends on how the pitching sets up,” Smith said. “You don’t know how guys are gonna pitch against you.”\nPhegley agreed, saying he will have to adjust from his spot behind the plate because it will be harder for his pitchers to get reads on batters when they face them in only one game. However, he said game-to-game adjustments are something the whole team has to deal with. “You’ve got to pretty much re-evaluate every game, reading outfield arms, how quick people are, speed on the bases, things like that,” Phegley said. \nThe weekend’s host, Austin Peay, is coming off an NCAA Tournament season that saw the team make the Nashville Regional after winning both the Ohio Valley Conference regular season and tournament championships. \nPhegley said the Hoosiers should have a different mentality heading down to Tennessee than they did last weekend on their way to Louisiana. The difference: increased confidence. \n“The main thing, we didn’t really know how good we were,” Phegley said of last weekend’s series against LSU. “We kind of had to prove to ourselves how good we were.”\nSquires agreed: “I think we had the confidence, but playing LSU kind of brought it out of us.”