Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Late Cardinal Rally Dooms IU

With an 8-3 lead heading into the top half of the 6th, IU simply couldn't hold on as a late rally gave the Louisville Cardinals a 10-8 victory this afternoon at Sembower Field. After Joey O'Gara pitched well (7H, 5ER, 1K, 1BB) for most of his 6 innings on the mound and left with an 8-5 lead, Matt Carr came on and gave up 3 runs on 3 hits while only recording a single out. Chris Squires (1-2) relieved Carr in the 7th and ultimately allowed the game-winning two-run homerun off the bat of All-America candidate Chris Dominguez to take the loss.

As a team, IU combined for 12 hits and 7 walks, but the Hoosiers also struck out 11 times (where as Louisville struck out only once), a number they clearly need to reduce moving forward. Chris Hervey, Jerrud Sabourin, Alex Dickerson, and Tyler Rogers each had 2 hits in the losing effort. Sabourin, Rogers, and Josh Phegley each drove home a pair, and Evan Crawford stole his 19th base of the season in the losing effort.

This is a tough loss to swallow for the Hoosiers. Anytime you have a 5-run lead heading into the 6th you should win. Louisville is definitely a very good team, but it is still concerning to see Carr and Squires get roughed up in the loss. The Hoosiers need both of them to be reliable out of the bullpen in order to stay in the thick of the Big Ten title race. As long as IU keeps stringing together Big Ten victories, a loss like this really doesn't matter all that much in the great scheme of things. Nonetheless, let's hope the Hoosiers can rebound tomorrow afternoon at home against Indiana State. Go Hoosiers!

4 comments:

  1. Who reports the weather for these games? The final stats report doesn't match what was being said on the audio - it sounded rainy, cold, and very windy. Was it really partly sunny and low 50's?

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  2. 2 hours prior to the game, sleet rained down upon the field. During the game, it showered on and off. It was probably in the mid-to-low 40s. If the game was on the West Coast, it would never have started, but I've been told that this is typical midwest Spring Ball (I believe Spring actually began 21 March which was a month ago)! I don't recall ever seeing the sun during the game and it was windy....probably 5 to 10 kts.

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  3. 41-46 degrees and I never saw the sun either. It's already warmer today before 10am than all day yesterday so the ISU game should be much better.

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  4. It sounded cold over the internet.

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