What followed was three Ryan Halstead breaking balls to Nick Sergakis for the second out. Two more breaking balls for strikes followed against Aaron Gretz, the next batter.
After a high fastball, Halstead dropped another breaking ball below the strike zone to strike out Gretz to end the inning.
In the bottom of the eighth, IU scored two runs to finalize a 6-4 win and a sweep against the Buckeyes on Friday in the final series of the regular season.
“I thought he was really good,” IU Coach Chris Lemonis said of Halstead. “He got us out of the jam, and then he got us out of the second and third jam, which was huge.”
The two runners Hasltead stranded in the eighth were the 13th and 14th of the game, and the 29th and 30th of the series.
Halstead said all he did was trust the pitch calling of senior catcher Brad Hartong and pitching coach Kyle Bunn.
“Coach Bunn loves to mix up the pitches and use the curveball in those situations,” Halstead said. “Just have to trust him and execute the pitches.”
Halstead also got out of a bases-loaded jam in the seventh inning. After coming in with the bases loaded and no outs, Halstead surrendered a sacrifice fly and an RBI bunt single.
He responded by getting the first of his five strikeouts Friday before a fly out to the wall in center field ended the threat.
The seventh inning was one of three times in the series finale the Buckeyes had the bases loaded and the second time the bases were loaded with less than two outs.
All four Buckeye runs came from those three situations, but there were also nine more runners left on base in those three innings.
“It’s kind of good and bad,” Lemonis said. “It means you’re letting a lot of guys on. But you’re also pitching in pressure situations, which is good.”
The first of these situations came in the second inning, with junior starting pitcher Christian Morris still on the mound.
The Buckeyes had the bases loaded with one out. Morris walked in the first Buckeye run, one of six walks he had in his 4.2 innings of work. The next batter, Troy Kuhn, grounded to junior third baseman Brian Wilhite for a 5-3 double play to end the ?inning.
“That was huge,” Lemonis said of the double play. “We just needed a little bit of mojo there I guess, and he just made a great play.”
Then in the fifth, Morris allowed a two-out double before walking the next two Buckeyes to load the bases. The two walks, the last of a four-pitch free pass, were enough for Lemonis to go to his bullpen for junior Caleb Baragar.
Throughout Baragar’s warmup pitches, throughout the seven pitch at-bat with multiple mound visits by Hartong, Morris paced back and forth in the IU dugout.
Then, when Zach Ratcliff grounded out to shortstop to end the inning, Morris was the first out of the dugout to congratulate Baragar for stranding three more Buckeyes.
The exchange was between two pitchers, one who has started recently and one who has pitched in relief recently. Halstead, normally the closer, entered the game in the seventh and pitched three innings for his second win of the season.
“It’s good when we trust ourselves and trust in how good we actually are and embrace the roles we’re given,” Halstead said. “Everyone today was just unreal, accepting their role and doing what they had to do for the team.”
