#IUBASE - 2018 NCAA Tournament

[Aaron 4,293]

Leadoff single for Fineman and Barr pinch runs.

[Aaron 4,293]

Bradley hit and its 2 on no outs.

[Aaron 4,293]

Walker strikes out. 1 out. 

[RaceToTheTop 25,842]

Bases full after a walk....only one out.

[Aaron 4,293]

Houston walks and its bases loaded 1 out. Texas goes to their Friday night starter for last 2 outs.

[Aaron 4,293]

Sam Crail pinch hitting.

[Aaron 4,293]

Strike 3 looking on Crail on a very close pitch and its up to Lloyd.

[Aaron 4,293]

Texas Left fielder reaches into crowd makes catch and drops it on way back in. Still alive. Barely.

[LamarCheeks 18,961]

3 minutes ago, Aaron said:

Strike 3 looking on Crail on a very close pitch and its up to Lloyd.

That pitch wasn't close -- it was 4 inches outside! 

[Aaron 4,293]

Lloyd strikes out and season ends. Thoughts in a minute. 

[HoosierX 1,567]

That was one hell of an entertaining game! Those two strikes on Crail that were clearly outside were killers, but he didn't look ready for that spot anyway.

Went to grad school at UT so I'll be cheering them on the rest of the way.

[Aaron 4,293]

Ok. I honestly don't know where to begin.

I certainly have no complaints with how we did in Regional and we made it further than any IU team in history besides the great 2013 and 2014 teams. We left everything on the field tonight and I am not sure we could of done anything differently this weekend. We gave it our all and came to compete. Tonight's game reminded me a lot of the Big Ten Championship game in 2012 (the game where we had the fight) where we battled all the way till the end but lost a hard fought game to a far superior PU team where we really gave it our all and came up just short of NCAA tourney. Also the 2015 Regional in second game against Vandy where we lost to them on the Dansby Swanson homer in the 9th (who is now on Braves) comes to mind where we gave it our all and came up short..

Now with all that said we have issues. The fact that we collapsed down the stretch and put ourselves into this much tougher Regional put us way behind the 8 ball. Without that we are hosting and like Minny have a great chance to be playing in Supers. Overall other than that stretch I got no complaints about the season since as a whole since we got 40 wins and clearly had our third best season in program history (I don't count anything Bob Morgan did with his patsie schedule and I am not well versed enough to know about our earlier good seasons pre 1950).

Most importantly with Lemonis at helm part of me knows we cannot keep competing at this level if our player development and fundamentals don't improve fast. Already next year Sowers, Miller, Lloyd and Stiever are certainly gone and Fineman and Milto could be gone. We will keep getting good recruits and we have some young promising players in the program like Ashley, Barr, Sommer Etc. but at some point these guys and any future recruits have to be developed better and Lemonis has not shown he is the guy to do that. Teams under Lemonis play hard and never quit but don't always play smart.     

There are certainly issues with this program and I have alluded to them many times and been critical but baseball, swimming and soccer are the only IU teams in the last decade that have competed at a high level constantly while other programs in the department have faltered more often than not. Congrats to our baseball Hoosiers on a great season overall!

[TXHoosierDaddy 1,375]

Takeaways from the game last night:

The good

-Luke Miller raked the whole weekend. 

- Saalfrank piched very well last night as the starter. Bullpen came in and did their job.

- Gorski had an amazing play in LF which surely looked like a double and another run scored. He also lined a shot to left in the 8th that should have scored a run and would have tied game 3-3. 

- defense 

The bad

- Baserunning in general

- Bunting. Can no one bunt on this team? The attempts were beyond pathetic and always killed us when we had momentum on our side. basically it put our guys in the hole 0-2. My question is if we can't bunt why continue to attempt it. Just let the guys swing. 

- Strikeouts. Way too many strikeouts and not enough contact. We gave that starting pitcher so much confidence last night. He only had one pitch for a while and then with the swing and misses he got confident in his curve. Outside of Miller and Bradley I feel like every hitter struck out too many times over the weekend. 

- Patience at the plate. Too many guys come up there hacking. Not enough are shortening their swing trying to make contact or even letting the pitcher work. 

Wow, we had some great chances against UT and could have easily won this game. Caught a tough break in the 8th with Gorski's hit to left that bounced over the fence for a ground rule double otherwise would have scored a run. Also, with 1 out in 9th ump rang up a PH on strikes with a ridiculously wide strike zone all of a sudden. Regardless, had opportunities and couldn't take advantage. Hitting to me is a major issue. We have talent there for sure but just didn't put the ball in play enough outside of the 1st inning in the A&M game yesterday (I didnt watch Texas Southern). Goes back to player development and seeing our hitters improve. I bet Sowers wants his opportunity back in the 8th. 3B made a heck of a play but Sowers was not keyed in all tourney. Tough way to go out. 

 

[Aaron 4,293]

31 minutes ago, TXHoosierDaddy said:

Takeaways from the game last night:

The good

-Luke Miller raked the whole weekend. 

- Saalfrank piched very well last night as the starter. Bullpen came in and did their job.

- Gorski had an amazing play in LF which surely looked like a double and another run scored. He also lined a shot to left in the 8th that should have scored a run and would have tied game 3-3. 

- defense 

The bad

- Baserunning in general

- Bunting. Can no one bunt on this team? The attempts were beyond pathetic and always killed us when we had momentum on our side. basically it put our guys in the hole 0-2. My question is if we can't bunt why continue to attempt it. Just let the guys swing.  

- Strikeouts. Way too many strikeouts and not enough contact. We gave that starting pitcher so much confidence last night. He only had one pitch for a while and then with the swing and misses he got confident in his curve. Outside of Miller and Bradley I feel like every hitter struck out too many times over the weekend. 

- Patience at the plate. Too many guys come up there hacking. Not enough are shortening their swing trying to make contact or even letting the pitcher work. 

Wow, we had some great chances against UT and could have easily won this game. Caught a tough break in the 8th with Gorski's hit to left that bounced over the fence for a ground rule double otherwise would have scored a run. Also, with 1 out in 9th ump rang up a PH on strikes with a ridiculously wide strike zone all of a sudden. Regardless, had opportunities and couldn't take advantage. Hitting to me is a major issue. We have talent there for sure but just didn't put the ball in play enough outside of the 1st inning in the A&M game yesterday (I didnt watch Texas Southern). Goes back to player development and seeing our hitters improve. I bet Sowers wants his opportunity back in the 8th. 3B made a heck of a play but Sowers was not keyed in all tourney. Tough way to go out. 

 

Great analysis. You said more or less what I did above in some different words. Like you said as a whole this staff is not very good at developing talent but recruits very well and gets team to play hard. Still not sure if that's enough in future years moving forward to keep winning at this level. 

Overall despite some disappointment down stretch we had a solid season (as I said the 3rd best in program in history by most measures).  

[TXHoosierDaddy 1,375]

25 minutes ago, Aaron said:

Great analysis. You said more or less what I did above in some different words. Like you said as a whole this staff is not very good at developing talent but recruits very well and gets team to play hard. Still not sure if that's enough in future years moving forward to keep winning at this level. 

Overall despite some disappointment down stretch we had a solid season (as I said the 3rd best in program in history by most measures).  

It scares me how we lack some fundamentals yet Lemonis and staff keep acting like we don't. The aggressive baserunning and bunting come to mind and these have been issues all year. Did we lay down one successfully bunt this weekend? I swear I counted at least five or six crucial times that our hitters got down 0-2 because they couldn't lay down a bunt at a big point in the game. Then we are on the defensive and most of the time struck out. Other teams didn't seem to have this problem. I like the aggressive baserunning but sometimes it is overkill and we run into unnecessary outs. I get so nervous when we have guys on base because the pick off play is always close (seems like we are always leaning or too far off the bag). Why does this happen to us so much and not other teams? 

This lineup was loaded. Not as good as 2013 or 2014 because we didn't have a Schwarber or Sam Travis but 1-7 we had solid hitters all year. However, you can't expect to advance when a number of those guys just don't show up at the plate (Sowers, Kaletha, Fineman).  Will we have that much talent offensively moving forward and if not what does that mean for the program? Aaron you might have answered that by saying not sure if we can sustain this. I agree. This may be as good as it gets. 

[Aaron 4,293]

I don't want to be in the woulda coulda shoulda business but I realized today Tennessee Tech knocked Mississippi out of the tournament last weekend. Austin got to host Supers which means if we had beaten Texas we would of had our first ever Bloomington Super Regional (Tennessee Tech did not bid for any tourney games as there stadium does not meet hosting requirements).

Don't misunderstand. We absolutely did our best and played toe to toe in the Regional. My complaint is the late season swoon which took us out of hosting and put us in a Regional that was much tougher.

For next year now with the vast majority of our team returning (save for Sowers, Miller, Sabol, Stiever and maybe Herrin) we absolutely should be Big Ten favorite again and in contention to host a Regional next year if we can finish the way we started. That should be the goal and anything short of that will be disappointing. In some bizarre way for the second straight year Lemonis' inability to develop players will give us a better team and chance with players back who should already be pro's.

After that I worry as our senior class next year will be all our best players pretty much so no matter what Lemonis does the players are gone. At that point Lemonis is going to have to develop players better or results will start to go down hill.