Big Ten Baseball Weekly Review - 2013 Week Two

Illinois

3-1

East Carolina 8, Illinois 2

Illinois 11, Ohio 6

Illinois 3, New Mexico State 2

Illinois 5, Boston College 2

The Illini had a decent weekend at the Keith LeClair Classic tournament in Greenville, NC. They weren't playing monster competition, but they took care of business, breaking a three-game losing streak and coming out of the weekend with a three-game winning streak instead.

Senior pitcher Kevin Johnson moved into the Top 10 in career strikeouts at Illinois, but unfortunately took the only loss of the weekend. Sophomore John Kravetz had a good outing against NMSU, going 6.1 innings while allowing two runs.

Indiana

1-1

Georgia Southern 12, Indiana 7

vs Georgia Southern, cancelled

Indiana 11, Georgia Southern 5

The first game of the series took three days to complete thanks to lousy weather and one of the games had to be cancelled. Usually reliable Joey DeNato got chased after only two innings in which he gave up six hits, five runs (two earned). The Hoosiers tried to battle back, but gave up five runs in the sixth to lose game one.

Game two Indiana won by consistently putting runs on the board, scoring in six innings. Kyle Hart went four innings, giving up three hits and three runs (two earned), Scott Effross came in in relief and went 4.1 innings, giving up three hits, two runs (one earned).

Georgia Southern is in the "others receiving votes" in the NCBWA College Baseball Poll.

Iowa

2-1

Oklahoma 3, Iowa 1

Iowa 6, New Mexico 2 (10 innings)

Iowa 4, Texas A&M - Corpus Christi 2

A decent week for Iowa at the Kleberg Bank College Classic tournament in Corpus Christi. Hawkeye pitcher Sasha Kuebel went eight innings, giving up only two runs, but the Sooners scored two runs in the final two innings to take the game. Not bad against an Oklahoma team expected to compete for a Big 12 title.

Then the Hawkeyes ripped off four runs in the tenth inning to beat New Mexico, and in the final game of the weekend scored two runs in the eighth to beat TAMU-CC.

Michigan

2-2

Michigan 9, Fordham 1

Michigan 10, Fordham 2

Fordham 14, Michigan 11

New York Mets exhibition 5, Michigan 2

The win/loss record should really be 2-1, since that Mets game is an exhibition.

30 runs in three games, Michigan got the bats going. 19 runs to three over two games, but in the third, Fordham scored nine runs in the first two innings and the Wolverines couldn't overcome that lead.

Fordham is projected to finish ninth in the Atlantic 10, so not exactly great competition for the Wolverines this weekend.

Michigan State

2-2

Michigan State 4, Western Carolina 1

Michigan State 14, Cincinnati 6

Furman 8, Michigan State 5

Miami (OH) 8, Michigan State 6

Western Carolina committed seven errors with all four of Sparty's runs being unearned. Then Cincinnati committed five errors in their game with MSU, three of them in a single inning leading to more MSU unearned runs. (Cincy won their first game of the season against Western Carolina. YAY for them!)

Furman won despite committing four errors, coming back from being down 5-0, when they put together a five-run sixth inning after scoring singles in the fourth and fifth.

Sparty nearly beat Miami, scoring three runs, two of them on wild pitches and the third an unearned run on a throwing error.

Minnesota

3-1

Minnesota 7, Western Michigan 1

Western Michigan 2, Minnesota 0

Minnesota 15, Western Michigan 1 (7 innings)

Minnesota 9, Western Michigan 2

The key here - the Gophers got hits and runs. The weekend featured the first time since May 29, 2010 that Minnesota had scored 15 runs in a game.

The Broncos 2-0 win over Minnesota is their only win so far this season, so while the Gophers have an advantage in playing at home in the Metrodome, the competition wasn't that stiff (although remember that Minnesota started the season heading out to play UCLA).

Gopher shortstop Michael Handel had a good weekend, hitting .466 with three runs, four RBIs, a double and a triple.

Nebraska

0-3

Texas 8, Nebraska 2

Texas 4, Nebraska 3

Texas 2, Nebraska 0

Oh, Huskers. It's one thing to play tough competition. It's an entirely different thing to keep losing to them.

Read James Stevenson's review for more info.

Northwestern

3-1

Northwestern 5, Ball State 2

Northwestern 4, Northern Kentucky 3

Saint Louis 10, Northwestern 4

Northwestern 11, Lipscomb 4

Decent weekend for Northwestern. Their loss comes against Saint Louis, a team that's projected to win the Atlantic 10 this season.

NU pitcher Zach Morton showed that he's one of the best pitchers in the Big Ten, going seven innings, giving up five hits and one earned run. He's

Wildcat pitcher Luke Farrell struck out 12 in six innings in the finale, allowing only three hits.

Next week, Northwestern will head to Columbia, MO, to take on the Missouri Tigers of the vaunted SEC.

Ohio State

4-0

Ohio State 10, South Dakota State 2

Ohio State 5, South Dakota State 2

Ohio State 13, Mount Saint Mary 2

Ohio State 13, Mount Saint Mary 4

If you look below, you'll notice that Ohio State swept the weekly baseball awards. Basically, Ohio State played competition that they should sweep and they did, mostly in convincing fashion.

I don't have to say much more, do I?

Penn State

0-3

Liberty 4, Penn State 1

Liberty 12, Penn State 3

Liberty 6, Penn State 1

Liberty opened a new baseball stadium the right way, by sweeping Penn State. Liberty catcher Trey Wimmer earned Big South Player of the Week honors because of the series, going six-for-nine with six RBI, three doubles, and two triples. He also stole a base and threw out the only stolen base attempt by Penn State.

Purdue

1-3

Purdue 9, Samford 4

Mississippi State 3, Purdue 2

Mississippi State 7, Purdue 6

Samford 6, Purdue 3

Purdue struggled against some pretty decent competition, losing single run games against Miss State. The Diamond Dogs are off to a 9-0 start, and highly ranked in all polls - the kind of team that Big Ten teams need to be playing if they're going to grow baseball on a national scale.

The win against Samford came when the Boilers got 16 hits and scored eight runs over the final three innings.

Purdue had the game tied in 3-3 in the seventh inning of the final game of the weekend, but a pair of bases-loaded walks doomed the Boilers, who will turn around and play Samford again in a three-game series this coming weekend.