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Aaron

IU Baseball Ranked and Ball St game thread

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First off I was the near the field tonight and I saw Matt Lloyd give a thumbs up that he was OK and from what I hear it was just back tightness and he should be fine after leaving while pitching in 9th. Also Gordon is fine from what I heard after taking a liner in the arm Sunday. Not sure on Richardson who got hit hard on arm with pitch late tonight but he did stay in game so hopefully that is a good sign. Also great to have Fineman back for a few innings although he looked rusty and like a guy who has not played in a long time.  

As for the game nice to see us put a mediocre team to bed for the 2nd straight game when we had a chance and not let them have a chance to rally late. Not a good start to the game with Cole Barr bad throws in both the 1st and 2nd inning leading to runs (although only 1 was ruled an error) for Ball State. With that said I loved the response to get right back in the game. The biggest play of the night was the Dunham HR that tied the game that was parked on the back of the outfield grass in deep right field near the foul pole. From there we took off and took the lead for good on the Richardson single next inning and then obviously had the big 9th to pull away. Also really nice night from Bierman with a solid 5 innings and only 1 of the 3 runs was his fault and Manous was great out of pen. 

The really bad news is the luster of this game continues to wear off as since 2015 when they have played at Victory Field each year attendance has dropped from 8,728 to 6,607 to 5,943 to 4,118 to just 2,441 this year which is nothing more than a nice Friday night crowd at the Bart. As much as I love this annual game here living in Indy, unless the attendance downward trend reverses I have a feeling this may be the end of it. I thought last years drop to just over 4K was just the weather being in the 30's but to drop another almost 2k this year when the weather was decent in the high 50's and pretty nice tells me this game is no longer interesting to people which is to bad. 

Moving forward we are about to see what this team is made of starting with Minny Friday playing all really good teams. We are a near lock for a high finish in the conference and another appearance in a Regional like last few years but the question is do we take the next step and win the Big Ten and/or host a Regional again with a big finish. We are about to see how good this team really is against top notch competition which we tend to do better against.    

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15 minutes ago, Brass Cannon said:

We went 9-0 against the state of Indiana this year. Pretty good for a coaches first year. 

Definitely feel like we upgraded with Mercer. With his connection to the university just hope we can keep him. 

100% agree on this and I said it at time. The player development in guys like Saalfrank, Sommer and Barr is exactly what was missing under Lemonis and the clutch hitting and making sure to take advantage of scoring opportunities is also drastically improved. Now just need to clean up the D which has regressed but otherwise I feel much better with the program under Mercer then under Lemonis. Big key is and I said it at time is Mercer having previous head coaching experience before coming to IU which Lemonis did not. 

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First of all to Brass and btownqb thanks for your game updates.  Second, a question to Aaron in regards to the steady decline in attendance.  In your opinion, would a different mid-week team make a difference?    We played PUke on a Wednesday, Kentucky coming up on a Tuesday in May, possibly Cincy or L'ville?   Schedules have to work for both parties as well as work with the Indians but I'm just thinking out loud that the game needs someone other than Ball State to bring the attendance back up.

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4 hours ago, Class of '66 Old Fart said:

First of all to Brass and btownqb thanks for your game updates.  Second, a question to Aaron in regards to the steady decline in attendance.  In your opinion, would a different mid-week team make a difference?    We played PUke on a Wednesday, Kentucky coming up on a Tuesday in May, possibly Cincy or L'ville?   Schedules have to work for both parties as well as work with the Indians but I'm just thinking out loud that the game needs someone other than Ball State to bring the attendance back up.

I agree. Just to clarify weekday attendance and attendance in general at the Bart is totally fine and support for the program has never been higher. It's just this yearly Indy game that is losing attendance.

And yes I do think replacing BSU with someone higher profile like a UK, PU, Cincy or Louisville might help. 

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52 minutes ago, TheWatShot said:

Wasn't the Victory Field game supposed to be against Notre Dame, and BSU was the replacement team?

It alternates. Sometimes its ND and sometimes its BSU. Attendance decline is the same regardless of which one it is. 

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34 minutes ago, btownqb said:

Keep UL and UK out of Indiana, they already do enough recruiting here. 

So are you suggesting we don't host either Kentucky or Louisville at home every year as we do now? That is pretty much the same thing.  

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