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Big Ten Tournament Title Goes to Indiana
MINNEAPOLIS
- Indiana Baseball (43-14) won the 2013 Big Ten Tournament
Championship, topping Nebraska 4-3 in walk-off fashion. The 11th-ranked
Hoosiers notched a conference clean sweep, also capturing the Big Ten’s
regular season title.
Scott Donley’s championship-clinching base knock plated Will Nolden to give IU a bottom-of-the-ninth victory.
Justin
Cureton added to his conference-best runs scored season total in the
third frame. He led off with a single into left and scooted up to
second base via a Chris Sujka sacfrice bunt. The tournament’s Most
Outstanding Player, Sam Travis, followed with an opposite field blast
off the wall in right, pushing across Cureton for his 54th run of 2013.
Nebraska
reset the table in the fifth, notching a run of their own and tying the
score back up at one run apiece. Bryan Peters’ triple was shadowed by a
single from Pat Kelly.
As IU starting pitcher Will
Coursen-Carr settled in for the remainder of the game, the Hoosier
lineup came alive again in the sixth. Travis opened by rocking the base
of the wall in center field for a lead-off double. A bean-ball
sandwiched by groundballs came next, giving way to Travis plating the
go-ahead tally. Pinch-hitting extraordinaire Ricky Alfonso later
delivered a sac fly to left, pushing the Hoosier edge to 3-1.
Alfonso is now 7-for-20 (.350) with seven RBI as a pinch hitter this season.
The
Huskers counterpunched in the seventh, turning a pair of hits into
their second run. Nebraska further heightened the drama by filling up
the bases and placing the go-ahead run in scoring position with the
3-hole hitter coming to the plate. He lined out to short though,
eliminating the threat and preserving the IU advantage heading to the
seventh inning stretch.
Drama continued to thicken in next
inning as the Huskers plated another run to even things up at 3-3.
Tanner Lubach, Saturday’s walk-off homerun hero, cranked a sac fly to
make it all-square.
Coursen-Carr gutted out a complete
game 127-pitch effort, retiring the Huskers in order in the top of the
ninth to set up the Donley walk-off hit in the bottom half. ‘Big Game’
Bill Nolden ignited the winner by doubling to start the Hoosiers’ final
at-bat. A pair of walks, one intentional and one unintentional, came
next to load the bases for Donley. The Crown Point, Ind., native
crushed the game-winning hit into the left center power alley, giving
way to a dog pile celebration near second base.
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