Indiana Baseball Loses To Rutgers In Big Ten Tournament Opener

OMAHA, Neb. – The Big Ten Tournament adventure isn’t over for the Indiana baseball team, but all meaningful stakes are.

Indiana opened the Big Ten baseball tournament with a 5-2 loss to Rutgers in their Pool C game at Charles Schwab Field on Tuesday.

In the past, a first-day loss put a team at a serious disadvantage if it wanted to come back and win the tournament, but that was the worst of the damage.

With the Big Ten employing a new pool-based format – with a tiebreaker system that favors that higher-seeded team – Indiana’s Big Ten Tournament-winning hopes are over.

All of this with two days to wait to play what will be a meaningless game for Indiana against Iowa on Friday.

The four pools at the Big Ten Tournament have three teams each and the play a round-robin format over four days. In its tiebreaker, the Big Ten decided to give the highest seed the edge. The only way there can be a tiebreaker in a three-team format is if they all beat each other to go 1-1.

But with the tiebreaker structure, Iowa would win Pool C and move on if the triple 1-1 were to occur. So Indiana is already eliminated with a dead rubber game (for Indiana) still to be played.

Indiana knew the situation going in and if there’s a factor to blame for the Hoosiers, it was that they didn’t play to their usual strength of hitting the ball consistently.

Rutgers pitchers LLL Mack, Nolan Peel and Quinn Berglin scattered 10 hits. Indiana had opportunities, but stranded 11 runners in the contest.

Rutgers managed nine hits, but made theirs count. The Scarlet Knights struck first with a solo home run by Jack Sweeney off of Indiana starter Ryan Kraft in the fourth inning.

Kraft – who allowed two earned runs in 6 2/3 innings of work – gave up another home run in the sixth as Ty Doucette drilled a home run to right to make it 2-0.

Rutgers broke the game open in the seventh. A RBI single by RJ Johnson and a two-run home run by Brennan Hyde off of Indiana reliever Gavin Seebold made it 5-0.

The Hoosiers stranded a runner in every inning but the first and ninth. Two runners were left on-base in the third and fifth innings. Indiana’s best chance to get back in the game came in the eighth inning. Jake Hanley, Hogan Denny and Cooper Malamazian all got aboard, but Caleb Koskie hit into a 1-2 fielder’s choice and Tyler Cerny struck out.

Three-time All-Big Ten first team player Devin Taylor hit a two-run home run in the ninth, but it wasn’t enough and the Hoosiers will now wait two days before playing out the string against Iowa at 3 p.m. on Friday.