Live Game Thread: Indiana vs. Iowa

[ptrich]

Hoosiers in first place as Huskers are swept at home (by Rutgers) for first time since 2009.

Despite taking the Iowa series, not clear where we stand against Quad 1 teams. Two wins, but two leading starters surrendered a lot of runs, some due to a sudden rash of errors. Hitters came through, but had to overcome three pickoffs. Happy to have the wins, but the hurdles ahead get bigger and bigger.

It's a young team that certainly has a lot of improvement needed in areas. I'm going to dwell on the positives this week and enjoy the first place status we have right now. We could have swept Iowa but we gave up three unearned runs in our opening one-run loss to them. We righted the ship enough to take the series. It's great to get a flawed series win against Iowa, and I can imagine what it's like with the Nebraska fans right now after watching their team drop three straight at home to a Rutgers team with less credentials than Iowa which had the best RPI in the B1G coming into our series. Here's hoping for a good showing against Rutgers and Nebraska in the pod at Rutgers next weekend.

 

[ptrich]

A couple more things about the game today. I believe the three earned runs given up by Litwicki were the first earned runs charged to him this season, with the homer being the big shot. Iowa had a string of five straight series wins broken today by IU.

 

[Epictetus]

Of course, gotta be happy with the wins, and hoping for the best going forward, but the play in the Iowa series does not bode well for the coming series against the higher ranked teams.

IU has been winning on pitching, tops in the Big Ten. But Iowa showed that an above average hitting team could batter our best.

Luckily, IU hitting, which is only middling, over-achieved to save the day. I don't think we're built to consistently win games when allowing over 6 runs a game.