Gameday article on the Evansville game tomorrow...

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Evansville comes into the contest as a Q2 team with a current RPI of 89.

RHP Ethan Phillips will be on the mound for IU to start the game and he has an ERA of 5.11 in 24.2 IP.

LHP Tyler Denu will be on the mound for the Purple Aces and he has an ERA of 4.30 in 44 IP. Denu last pitched on May 3rd against Butler and he went 4.0 IP, giving up two hits and one unearned run while striking out seven.

According to the forecast, it's going to start out as a very rainy day tomorrow especially in the a.m. with it tapering off starting in the early to mid afternoon and then there will be a 15 pct chance of rain at game time which is 6 p.m. ET. The forecast at game time is for a mostly cloudy sky and 67 degrees with the wind NNW 7 mph.

Baseball Gameday: host Evansville - Indiana University Athletics

BLOOMINGTON, Ind.– The regular season home finale for the Indiana baseball program arrives in the form of a non-conference matchup against Evansville. The...

iuhoosiers.com

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This has nothing to do with the Evansville game, but I didn't want to open a thread on it. During the D1Baseball weekly chat that occurs on Mondays, a couple of B1G items came up and here they are.

Dylan: A week ago we were talking about the outside shot of Maryland sneaking into a hosting position if they could win out and get into the 20-25 RPI range. After a midweek loss to Northeastern and dropping a game to Minnesota at home, they’re down to 47 in the RPI. Should I be sweating about them getting into the field at all now? Feels like they have to win either the Big Ten tournament or regular season title to lock themselves in. With the tiebreaker over Indiana I feel confident about winning the regular season still in this last weekend, but am having a little doubt creep in.
Aaron Fitt: I still think the Terps should be OK for an at-large bid if they win the regular-season title, which is something the committee typically places significant value on. Also the fact that Maryland has won 10 straight weekends should really carry some weight, helping overcome a borderline RPI.

Guest: Should either of the Big Ten contenders (Maryland and Indiana) still harbor any hopes of hosting if they win out the final three games and also win the conference tournament? Or are their projected RPI ceilings just too low at this point?
Kendall Rogers: The ship has sailed (it was always a long shot) for Maryland with an RPI of 49, but Indiana could get back into the discussion with a very strong finish with an RPI of 29. Let’s say Indiana rolls this weekend to win the regular season title and then rolls in the conference tournament. That’s the pathway.

As far as Dylan's comment above that he is confident that the Terps will win regular season title because of the tiebreaker over IU. If those two teams finish the season with the same conference record, they both will still be co-champions despite the results of that series with the Terps, and that did hurt our egos over that series. What it does is give the Terps the No. 1 seed in the tourney and that's it.

Kendall Rogers, the head guy at D1Baseball, still thinks IU has a pathway to hosting a regional, but I'm not sure how he sees that happening after we sunk to where we did in the RPI rankings over the Terps series. It's nice to know a guy that follows college baseball for a career thinks that, but I would be shocked if that happened. On the other hand, if we swept the remaining regular season schedule and then ran the table in the conference tournament, and that is a HUGE if, maybe there would be an outside shot of it.

 

[kraft cheese+macaroni]

This has nothing to do with the Evansville game, but I didn't want to open a thread on it. During the D1Baseball weekly chat that occurs on Mondays, a couple of B1G items came up and here they are.

Dylan: A week ago we were talking about the outside shot of Maryland sneaking into a hosting position if they could win out and get into the 20-25 RPI range. After a midweek loss to Northeastern and dropping a game to Minnesota at home, they’re down to 47 in the RPI. Should I be sweating about them getting into the field at all now? Feels like they have to win either the Big Ten tournament or regular season title to lock themselves in. With the tiebreaker over Indiana I feel confident about winning the regular season still in this last weekend, but am having a little doubt creep in.
Aaron Fitt: I still think the Terps should be OK for an at-large bid if they win the regular-season title, which is something the committee typically places significant value on. Also the fact that Maryland has won 10 straight weekends should really carry some weight, helping overcome a borderline RPI.

Guest: Should either of the Big Ten contenders (Maryland and Indiana) still harbor any hopes of hosting if they win out the final three games and also win the conference tournament? Or are their projected RPI ceilings just too low at this point?
Kendall Rogers: The ship has sailed (it was always a long shot) for Maryland with an RPI of 49, but Indiana could get back into the discussion with a very strong finish with an RPI of 29. Let’s say Indiana rolls this weekend to win the regular season title and then rolls in the conference tournament. That’s the pathway.

As far as Dylan's comment above that he is confident that the Terps will win regular season title because of the tiebreaker over IU. If those two teams finish the season with the same conference record, they both will still be co-champions despite the results of that series with the Terps, and that did hurt our egos over that series. What is does is give the Terps the No. 1 seed in the tourney and that's it.

Kendall Rogers, the head guy at D1Baseball, still thinks IU has a pathway to hosting a regional, but I'm not sure how he sees that happening after we sunk to where we did in the RPI rankings over the Terps series. It's nice to know a guy that follows college baseball for a career thinks that, but I would be shocked if that happened. On the other hand, if we swept the remaining regular season schedule and then ran the table in the conference tournament, and that is a HUGE if, maybe there would be an outside shot of it.

Interesting. But I'm just not sure this team is setup to do well in a tournament setting....not enough arms that can be counted on. And I loathe TD Ameritrade (is that what it's still called?)

 

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Interesting. But I'm just not sure this team is setup to do well in a tournament setting....not enough arms that can be counted on. And I loathe TD Ameritrade (is that what it's still called?)

I think we are better suited this year in the pitching department. Last year, our pitching came on strong near the end of the season after being an albatross around our neck with the worst team ERA in the conference and it seemed we couldn't score enough runs to keep up with what the pitching staff was giving up.

Last season, we got good pitching in the tournament through the first three games, but when we got to the fourth game against Rutgers, we were at the bottom of the barrel so to speak in the pitching department and that was it.

This season, we've had some guys that have been up and down this season and if we can get good outings out of them in the tournament, who knows what can happen. It's a very optimistic sign to see that Bothwell is finally starting to come around after he was supposed to be the one pitcher that we would rely heavily on at the start of the season. Bothwell's main problem has been control issues.

We know what we have in Sinnard, Kraft and Yoho. Foley has looked really good throwing heat in closing out games. Risedorph, as a starter, had a nice game in his last appearance in that role. Seiler has looked much better in his last couple of appearances. Maybe I'm being a little too optimistic in looking at it like this, but I certainly see the potential to have a good showing in the pitching department come tournament time.

I bet there's not a fan base out there in the B1G that is not concerned about their pitching depth. Maryland's starting rotation has shown some cracks of late with their hitting mostly covering that up. Iowa's Brecht has had a lot of control problems of late and he has had some really short outings of late, and Nebraska's ace Emmett Olson has been rocked a couple of times of late and his ERA is nearing 5.00, so I don't know who is deep enough in the B1G to go three or four games with effective pitching. It may be a case of which teams have the hottest offense.

That's my two cents for what it's worth.