COLUMBUS, Ohio — People are taught to share, but sometimes it’s better to have something all to yourself.
After staging a late-inning comeback to beat Ohio State and capture a share of the Big Ten regular season title on Friday, the IU baseball team wanted to leave no doubt about who the best team in the conference was.
The Hoosiers captured their first outright Big Ten regular season title since 1932 with an 8-1 victory Saturday at Bill Davis Stadium’s Nick Swisher Field by scoring six runs through the first three innings.
“That was unreal,” sophomore catcher Kyle Schwarber said. “It’s been too long before we actually had that, and the head coach says, ‘This group of guys, you deserve it,’ and I feel like we do.
“We’ve worked hard all year and we’ve been to hell and back sometimes.”
IU’s “hell” was a 1-5 stretch in mid-April that included being swept at Michigan State and a loss at home to MAC squad Ball State.
Now the team is in Hoosier heaven.
The Hoosiers (40-13, 17-7 Big Ten) were predicted by most national publications to win the Big Ten, and they took care of business in a resounding fashion a day after securing their first shared conference title since 1949.
That takes two monkeys off IU’s back: the 64 years since the last shared title and the 81 years since the last outright title, at the same time winning its 40th game against Division-I opponents, a school single-season record.
“I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t proud but it’s really it’s everybody, what we’ve all put in,” IU Coach Tracy Smith said. “It’s still shocking when you think about the context of not having done this in however many years at such a great institution.”
Winning the outright regular season conference crown and reaching the 40-win mark also positions IU to secure an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament and the right to host a regional at Bart Kaufman Field.
Trailing 2-0 in the ninth inning of Friday’s game, IU rallied for an improbable 7-2 win against the Buckeyes and one of the Big Ten’s best closers in Ohio State’s Trace Dempsey, highlighted by freshman
second baseman Nick Ramos’ 10th-inning grand slam.
On Saturday, IU didn’t wait so late in the game to score.
Senior shortstop Michael Basil continued his hot hitting in the first inning, ripping a double into the left center field gap that scored sophomore first baseman Sam Travis and sophomore designated hitter Scott Donley, who both singled with two outs.
The Hoosiers added three runs in the second, capped by a two-run double from Travis that sliced into the right field corner.
Sophomore starter Kyle Hart did the rest, firing 8.1 innings of one-run ball on four hits with two strikeouts and two walks.
Hart started shaky, though.
He walked Joe Ciamacco to lead off the bottom of the first and promptly allowed an RBI double to Kirby Pellant. The rocky start brought back memories of Hart’s previous start against Northwestern in which he lasted just 1+ innings and allowed six earned runs.
This time, Hart buckled down.
“The rest of my time here I might not get a chance to pitch in something like that,” Hart said, “so I kind of just grabbed the reigns and said, ‘I’m not going to let this happen again,’ and worked out of it.”
Hart (8-2) settled into a grove after allowing two hits and two walks through the first couple of innings, at one point retiring 12 consecutive Buckeyes and pitching 10 ground-ball outs.
Ohio State (34-21, 15-9) threatened with back-to-back two-out singles in the sixth, but Hart induced a ground out to get out of it.
“I feel fortunate to be the one chosen,” Hart said. “I didn’t pitch well last week. (Smith) could have easily put someone else in there. He came to me in the third inning and said, ‘You’re my guy, I want you out there, and settle in, you can do this,’ and shook my hand, and I didn’t look back.
“It meant a lot for him to put our season in my hands.”
When Ramos flipped pinch-hitter Aaron Gretz’s grounder to first to end the game, the Hoosiers stormed the field.
Smith stuck with his recent theme: the Big Ten championship is just one more accomplishment, and there are even loftier goals ahead.
“We’ll celebrate with a nice meal on the way home, and then unload on the bus there in Bloomington and get back to work tomorrow and focus on that first game of the tournament on Thursday,” he said.
A lot has changed since the baseball team’s last outright Big Ten championship in 1932
- McDonald’s wasn’t around yet. The fast-food chain was founded in 1940.
- The Radio City Music Hall opened later that year, in December 1932.
- Herman B Wells was not president of IU yet in 1932. Wells had just joined the faculty at IU Bloomington two years prior in 1930. He would not assume the presidency at IU for another five years in 1937. The library wouldn’t be built for another 37 years.
- The IU basketball team had zero banners, winning its first in 1940.
- The Indiana Memorial Union was dedicated in June 1932.
- The U.S. population was just more than 125 million. It is now more than 315 million.
- Kyle Hart, who recorded the win for the Hoosiers Saturday, would not be born for another 60 years.
