IU clinches share of Big Ten title

There was no excessive cheering, no team photo, no dogpile, no dramatic celebration when IU clinched a share of the conference title, giving them consecutive Big Ten titles for the first time in school history.

“Coach walked in and said the locker room felt like we had just gotten swept,” first baseman Sam Travis said.

The No. 9 Hoosiers (35-12, 19-2) completed the sweep of Penn State (17-29, 5-15) Sunday, outscoring the Nittany Lions by a combined score of 27-3 in three games.

Even though the Hoosiers’ win clinched at least a share of the conference title, IU Coach Tracy Smith said the mood was not overly celebratory, and Travis called the event a “stepping stone.”

“It’s nice to get it,” Smith said. “But we were pretty low key about it.”

Both Smith and Travis said the team has bigger goals in mind, such as the school’s first-ever national championship.

IU is projected to be a national seed for the playoffs, which means they’ll be able to play host to the first two weekends of NCAA tournament play.

If they advance past the first two weekends — the regionals and the super regionals — the Hoosiers will play in the College Baseball World Series in Omaha, Neb.

“We know we have more things we want to accomplish,” Travis said of the Big Ten title.

IU leads both Nebraska and Illinois by three games, putting the Hoosiers in the driving seat for the conference title.

With just one win against Minnesota next weekend, IU will clinch the outright Big Ten crown.

Both the Hoosiers’ offense and pitching were dominant in the three-game sweep of the Nittany Lions. The offense averaged nine runs a game while the pitching staff averaged just one run given up per game.

Coming into the series, no home runs had been hit in Medlar Field, home of Penn State, all year.

Travis hit three this weekend.

“Yeah, I was seeing the ball well this weekend,” he said.

Travis went 5-for-14 with six RBI and recorded a home run in each of the three games. He now leads the Big Ten with 10 long balls on the year.
Several of his other teammates also had prolific performances at the plate.

Brad Hartong went 7-for-12 with five RBI, Kyle Schwarber went 5-for-11 with seven runs and Dustin DeMuth went 8-for-11, batting .727 on the series.

As for pitching, Joey DeNato recorded his ninth win in his past nine starts.

DeNato went six innings without giving up a run in his start Friday.
He improved to 11-1 on the year with a 1.91 ERA. No other Big Ten pitcher has more than eight wins.

DeNato is now just one win shy of tying the single season record for wins in a season in IU history.

Both Eric Arnett and Brian Partenheimer in 2009 and 1997, respectively, recorded 12 wins in a single year.

The Hoosiers got off to a cold start at 12-10 after playing a tough nonconference schedule.

They are 23-2 in their past 25 games and are currently riding an eight-game winning streak in which they’ve beaten their opponents by an average of 7.1 runs a game.

Smith and Travis said they thought scheduling a tough nonconference has helped the Hoosiers in Big Ten play, where their 19 conference wins is a school record.

“But even with the rough start we had,” Travis said, “we knew what we had here as a team.”