Hoosiers get No. 2 seed in Lexington, open vs. NC State
by Mike Miller
Indiana had reason to be confident.
But that didn’t make the Hoosiers’ wait any easier.
When they converged inside their Bart Kaufman Field clubhouse to watch the NCAA Tournament selection show on Monday afternoon, IU players were left to sit through more than half of the hour-long ESPN broadcast to await their postseason direction.
Even with a solid postseason resume, there are no sure things on selection day.
“There was a commercial break about halfway through and when that hit, I think you could hear everybody kind of take a deep breath,” second baseman Tony Butler said.
Indiana, it turned out, was in for a pleasant surprise.
The Hoosiers picked up a No. 2 seed in the Lexington Regional, where they’ll begin the NCAA Tournament against No. 3 North Carolina State on Friday at 7 p.m. The game will be televised on ESPN3.
The double-elimination regional begins when host Kentucky faces No. 4 Ohio on Friday at noon.
“We were surprised, honestly,” outfielder Craig Dedelow said. “We were pretty confident going into it that, hopefully, we’d make the tournament. It got late there and we got a little nervous. Seeing our name pop up as a No. 2 seed was pretty big for us.”
This is the fourth time in five seasons that Indiana (32-22-2) will play in the NCAA Tournament, after having fallen just shy of the bubble in 2016. In total, this is the program’s seventh NCAA Tournament appearance, and it comes during a nice year for the Big Ten, which tied a conference record with five teams — IU, Nebraska, Michigan, Maryland and conference tournament champion Iowa — in the field.
Consider that the Pac-12 only has four tournament teams this year. The Southeastern Conference led the nation with eight.
It was believed that Indiana was in line for a No. 3 seed after winning only one of its three games in the Big Ten Tournament.
The Hoosiers, however, were delighted to see that their resume and postseason positioning were stronger than they realized.
“It says a lot about our program, the players who’ve been here and the ones in the past,” said Chris Lemonis, who is the first coach in program history to make two regional appearances in his first three seasons leading the Hoosiers. “I’m excited for our league. We were going through and watching and seeing where our league was going. It validates a lot of the things we say all year long. The growth of the Big Ten just took another step forward.”
For Lemonis, keeping Indiana in lockstep with the recently-raised expectations for his program, one that should annually compete for Big Ten titles and NCAA Tournament appearances, is part scheduling science.
Lemonis has embraced a tough scheduling approach, including early-season trips to play the nation’s top teams in more agreeable climates and dotting the midweek portion with challenging regional opponents.
This season, Indiana played 17 games against tournament teams, winning nine of those contests and finishing one in a tie. Two of IU’s losses to tournament teams this season came to Oregon State, the No. 1 overall seed, in a season-opening showcase in Arizona.
Indiana, the highest-rated RPI team in the Big Ten at No. 26, is 8-7-1 against the RPI top 50 this season. So the Hoosiers feel they’re ready to handle the NCAA Tournament environment and the pressures that come with it.
“In my world, I look at my future schedules almost every day, just trying to figure it out,” Lemonis said. “You can’t always figure it out because it happens so far in advance, but it took a lot of time and effort to put our schedule together. Then you have to win during that schedule. I do think all those parameters, and just the atmosphere we get to play in every night with a great fan base, I think it prepares you for these types of games and environments.”
Indiana won its final six weekend series of the regular season before dropping two of three in the Big Ten Tournament this past weekend at Bart Kaufman Field.
NC State (34-23) also closed the regular season strong, winning 13 of its final 15 regular season games before losing to North Carolina in the second game of last week’s Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament.
The Wolfpack, making their third consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance and 15th in the past 20 seasons, went 9-11 against the RPI top 50 this season.
“I’ve known their head coach (Elliott Avent) for a long time,” Lemonis said. “I know, early in the season, they were ranked as one of the teams in the possible eight for (the College World Series in) Omaha. There’s talent there. I think they’re playing really well right now. That first game will be a huge test for us.”
http://www.hoosiersportsreport.com/2017/05/hoosiers-get-no-2-seed-in-lexington-open-vs-nc-state/
Go Hoosiers!
