No. 12 Indiana Falls in Home Opener to Cincinnati, 8-3

Tuesday, March 6

Bloomington, Ind.

3 p.m.

Indiana University

9-3

Cincinnati

7-5

Cincinnati

Indiana

No. 12 Indiana Falls in Home Opener to Cincinnati, 8-3

3/6/2018 7:20:00 PM | Baseball

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By: Andy Graham
IUHoosiers.com

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - Not even a pile of rally caps perched atop reliever Brian Hobbie's head in the Indiana dugout worked.

It was not the happiest Hoosier homecoming Tuesday afternoon.

IU entered Tuesday afternoon's home opener 9-2, ranked No. 12 nationally and riding the momentum of taking three of four games against ranked host San Diego over the weekend.

Cincinnati's Bearcats didn't care about any of that, defeating the Hoosiers on a blustery afternoon, 8-3.

"We'd been playing good," IU coach Chris Lemonis said. "The game of baseball, sometimes, will punch you right in the nose when you're feeling good. We've got to be able to come back out and be ready to play.

"And you've got to tip your hat to Cincinnati. They played great in all phases of the game today. They just beat us."

UC out-hit IU, 15-5, and had all five of the game's extra-base hits, including solo homers from Connor McVey and Cole Murphy. Every Bearcat in the lineup had at least one hit and No. 9 batter Treg Haberkorn had three, including a double.

Cincinnati starter A.J. Kullman allowed just one unearned run and fanned five through five full innings in evening his season record at 1-1. Bearcat closer David Orndorff struck out the side in the ninth.

And there was much good contact made by IU bats in between, either.

"We really hadn't faced a big sinker-ball pitcher this year and he really had that working," sophomore left-fielder Matt Gorski, the only Hoosier with two hits Tuesday, said of Kullman. "He was really good today and we swung a little out of the zone, so that hurt us a bit."

Cincinnati's offense began putting the hurt on the Hoosiers right away with a run in the first as McVey sent a one-out shot into a rather ferocious wind and over the leftfield wall for a 1-0 lead.

The Bearcats made it 3-0 in the second after a Eric Santiago walk, a Joey Thomas single and a two-out, two-RBI double down the leftfield line by Haberkorn.

Kullman set down the entire Hoosier lineup in order through three innings, with four Ks, before IU broke through with an unearned run in the fourth.

After Logan Kaletha reached on an error, Matt Lloyd looped Indiana's first hit of the day into left-center and Kaletha took third, from which he scored on Luke Miller's ensuing RBI fielder's choice. The Bearcats concluded the inning by turning a 4-6-3 double play.

The Bearcats (7-5) got the run back right away in the top of the fifth via some tough-luck for IU reliever Tim Herrin. After Herrin struck out the first two men he faced, Joey Weimer lifted a wind-blown single to right, followed by seeing-eye singles by Cole Murphy and Eric Santiago.

The Bearcats scored in every subsequent inning except the ninth against IU's bullpen. "We were actually rested," Lemonis said of his pitching staff. "I felt we had all our guys available. We just didn't pitch great."

Addressing starter Andrew Saalfrank's two innings of work, Lemonis added:

"Be more competitive. Compete for each pitch. We seem to give in and throw one right down the middle … he has good stuff, and he made some really good pitches, but the really good guys never give you that ball right down the middle of the plate."

Hoosier hitters didn't see many of those, and didn't do much with the few they got.

"We really chased early," Lemonis said of IU's mostly futile at-bats. "I don't know if we were trying to hit a home run, because it was windy. And I will tip my hat to their guy (Kullman). He threw that power sinker in there and we just chased down all day long.

"We just couldn't get it going offensively … then we couldn't get the big hit. We got the bases loaded, had a chance to make it a game, but just couldn't seem to get that one big swing."

The Hoosiers got back-to-back walks to lead off their sixth but the middle of their order could not capitalize.

Singles by Jeremy Houston and Matt Lloyd helped fuel a two-run IU eighth, but the Hoosiers left the bases loaded when Gorski's liner was snagged in the right-center gap.

Pacific comes in this weekend for a three-game set this weekend that, weather permitting, opens at 6 p.m. Friday.

"We've got good teams coming," Lemonis said. "We've got Pacific coming in from the west coast. We want to be getting into a groove and playing well. We've been road warriors for the first three weeks, but we're just trying to get back home and play good baseball.

"We've really been playing good baseball. Y'all got to see our worst (today). Even some of our losses in the other game, we've competed in every game. Today, we weren't real competitive. So, hopefully, we'll come out ready to go on Friday."