Indiana University Athletics
IU Looking Forward To Purdue Matchup
4/5/2016 10:56:00 AM | Softball
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - Put it behind you. Move on.
That was more or less the message head coach Michelle Gardner gave her softball team after being swept by Michigan last weekend. With a Tuesday doubleheader against rival Purdue in West Lafayette looming, the Hoosiers don't have much time to worry about the past weekend's losses to the No. 2 team in the country.
"My club's still really good," Gardner said. "They have to bounce back and bounce back quickly."
All told, the Wolverines have one of the premier offenses in the country, but still, IU can't allow runs as it did and expect to beat the premier teams in the Big Ten.
On the opposite end of that spectrum, Indiana could hang its hat on its own offensive production against Michigan. The Hoosiers continued a trend of hot hitting even while leaving 21 runners on base throughout the three-game series, which leaves hope that they could have even more production with timelier hitting.
"We scored runs on a team that doesn't give up a lot of runs," senior outfielder Shannon Cawley said. "There's definitely a lot of things we can build on and learn from going into the next few series."
The pressing challenge for now is Purdue (20-15, 2-4), who won two games against Iowa in a series win last weekend after beginning the Big Ten season being swept by No. 22 Minnesota. The Hoosiers (20-13, 3-3) swept the Hawkeyes in Bloomington last weekend.
For Cawley, a fifth-year senior, Tuesday's games will mark the 13th and 14th times she's played against Indiana's rival from the north. The Hoosiers are 4-8 against the Boilermakers during her time in Bloomington and split last year's two-game series.
"I always love playing Purdue," she said. "It's always fun, an in-state rival. And they're a good team, so we're pretty psyched about that."
In Purdue, Indiana will see an opponent not unlike itself.
Indiana's two Big Ten teams hold similar records in the early stages of the Big Ten season and are fighting to stay in the upper-half of the conference standings. Though there's still 17 games left in the Big Ten season alone, IU won't want to be playing from behind, particularly after the opening sweep to start the year.
That's why Gardner stressed the urgency to move on Sunday afternoon in the minutes following the dropped series to Michigan. In the midst of a stretch of eight Big Ten games in 10 days, she doesn't want to waste any time.
"We need to have short-term memory and come out Tuesday and do what we can do," Gardner said. "We'll be okay."
