Indiana baseball could have folded after being down four runs before recording three outs in the first inning against Ball State University. Instead, Tuesday night became an example of a young team starting to turn hard lessons into results.
After surrendering four runs in the first inning, the Hoosiers answered immediately, scoring four of their own in the bottom half. Indiana didn’t allow Ball State to score again in a 6-–4 win at Bart Kaufman Field in Bloomington.
“It would have been really easy… to roll over,” Indiana head coach Jeff Mercer said postgame. “But we didn’t, we just kept going.”
Indiana’s offense erased the four-run first inning deficit through RBI doubles from sophomore first baseman Jake Hanley and sophomore outfielder Caleb Koskie, tying the game before the first inning ended.
From there, the approach shifted. The Hoosiers didn’t chase the game, they settled into it.
After the rough opening frame, Indiana’s pitching staff settled in. The Hoosiers held Ball State scoreless over the final eight innings, with the bullpen delivering one of its most complete performances of the season.
“We got off to a poor start and responded incredibly well,” Mercer said. “Could not be happier with the way that we pitched the ball after the first.”Defensively, Indiana supported that effort.
“We took care of the ball, didn’t extend innings, didn’t extend opportunities, and it really shrunk the game,” Mercer said.
That attention to detail led to Indiana’s game- winning moment.
Hanley led the seventh inning off with a single and got into scoring position following two sacrifice hits. With two outs, freshman second baseman Landen Fry came through to put Indiana ahead, making it all the way to second base following a throwing error.
Sophomore infielder Will Moore lined a single to the right side, scoring Fry and extending Indiana’s lead to 6-4 where it stayed until its close in the ninth.
The win wasn’t earned without late tension. Indiana still had to navigate a situation that had caused problems all season.
Ball State applied pressure in the final two innings, putting runners on base in both the eighth and ninth. In the ninth, after recording two quick outs, Indiana allowed a single and a walk to bring the tying run to the plate. It was the kind of late-game moment that had flipped results against the Hoosiers earlier this season.
But this time, the outcome was different.
Graduate student right-hander Michael Sarhatt shut down the Cardinals in the ninth, closing out the tight midweek win 6-4.
“He’s a grown man,.” Mercer said. “He’s an adult, and an A-plus person from an A-plus family. You could see that in the recruiting process. You trust those guys, and he was able to do it. It helps the young guys to see someone like that, the way he works, the way he competes. He’s a professional.”
That response has not always been there this season.
Indiana’s early schedule featured some of the best teams in the country, a challenge Mercer said was intentional from the start. Indiana’s opening series loss against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill set the tone for what became a relentless stretch of high-level matchups, many of them on the road.
The schedule and its high level of competition rarely let up. Even into Big Ten play, the Hoosiers faced then-No. 24 Nebraska and now-No.21 Oregon, along with other early-season challenges against then-No. 2 Louisiana State University and the University of Notre Dame. At times, it felt like Indiana could not catch a break.
But Mercer’s faith in his squad never wavered.
“If there was ever a time for us to really challenge a young group and try to really drive growth, now was the time,” Mercer said. “This was the group, and so we scheduled it on purpose.”
The results have been difficult. The Hoosiers have dropped seven one-run games this year. In those games, the margin has often come down to a single at-bat, a missed opportunity or one defensive mistake, moments that have consistently gone against the Hoosiers.
“We’ve played a lot of really good baseball, but if you want to do something great, you have to be willing to do really challenging things,” Mercer said.
That mindset has shaped how Indiana handles adversity.
“The growth is through the difficulty,” Mercer said. “The growth is in the hard times. When everything goes right, you don’t grow nearly as much. The failure is the feedback.”Tuesday showed that growth, and it took shape in the form of positive results.
Indiana, now 13-19 overall, will travel to College Park, Maryland, for a three-game weekend series against Maryland, with first pitch set for 6 p.m. Friday.
Follow reporters Elakai Anela (@elakai_anela and eanela@iu.edu) and Will Kwiatkowski (@WKwiatkowski_15 and wdkwiatk@iu.edu) for updates throughout the Indiana baseball season.
