COLUMBUS, Ohio – In the words of coach Paul Stevens, Northwestern “couldn’t find any green real estate” in its 5-0 loss against Indiana in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament on Wednesday at Bill Davis Stadium.
The loss didn’t come because of pitching, as junior lefty Eric Jokisch hurled an impressive game once he got through a rough first inning. And it wasn’t the defense, as the Wildcats turned three double plays, caught three stealing and had just one miscue-to the Hoosiers’ three-throughout the contest.
It was the hard-hit balls that found their way right to Indiana’s infielders. It was the pop-ups and fly outs that let Indiana lefty Drew Leininger pitch a complete game. It was Chris Kontos’ blast deep to centerfield that would have been a double if the Hoosiers’ Tyler Rogers hadn’t chased it down for a seemingly impossible out.
NU, a team that frequently strings together singles for runs, hit eight singles. This time, the Cats didn’t have the situational hitting to link the base hits together, leaving a goose egg on the scoreboard for the entirety of the game’s two hours and 22 minutes.
“We didn’t help (Jokisch),” Stevens said. “We may have played defense behind him, but we surely didn’t do anything offensively. We left a lot of guys at second base. … We kind of wasted an awfully, awfully good performance by Eric Jokisch against a very good hitting team. I thought he did phenomenal, and we just didn’t get it done from a hitting standpoint.”
Once the first inning was out of the way, the Hoosiers’ hitters didn’t do much damage either.
In the first, Jokisch walked leadoff hitter Micah Johnson, plunked power man Alex Dickerson on the shoulder and allowed a pair of RBI singles and a 2-RBI single to score four runs to start the game. Two groundouts and one Chad Noble throw to catch shortstop Ethan Wilson stealing second base helped Jokisch finally end the 42-pitch frame.
Jokisch threw just 11 pitches in the second, getting first baseman Michael Basil to ground out to second before allowing two singles. Jokisch stranded those runners at the hands of a 4-6-3 double play off Jerrud Sabourin’s sharply hit ball to second baseman Zach Morton.
Jokisch said he adjusted his focus to throwing strikes, rather than striking batters out.
“I just tried to make my pitches,” the southpaw said. “The first inning, I didn’t do that. I wanted to keep going to give my team a chance. I felt bad about giving those runs up in the first. I just wanted to go back out there and get the outs I needed.”
Jokisch got the outs he needed and allowed just one more run off a base hit by right fielder Michael Earley in the seventh. Junior reliever Matt Gailey took the mound in the ninth and got three quick outs to give NU a chance to come back. But the offensive production wasn’t there, and the third-seeded Cats dropped the contest to the sixth-seeded Hoosiers.
Just before NU took on Indiana, Iowa and Purdue wrapped up their afternoon matchup, which determined who NU will face in the second round of the tournament: Purdue.
In their contest against the Hawkeyes, the Boilermakers jumped ahead early, leading 4-0 in the fifth. Iowa promptly tied the game in the bottom half and pulled ahead by three in the sixth to outlast Purdue, 7-4, sending the Boilermakers to the losers’ bracket to face the loser of the NU-Indiana duel.
Purdue didn’t start its ace, righty Matt Bischoff, against Iowa, so NU gets to face him today at 11:05 a.m.
Bischoff, whose ERA (3.45) ranks third in the Big Ten behind Ohio State’s Alex Wimmers and Penn State’s David Lutz, held NU scoreless for eight innings when the teams met April 24 in West Lafayette, Ind. Then, Bischoff struck out 10 batters and allowed 10 baserunners, while limiting the Cats to seven hits.
Junior third baseman Chris Lashmet, who managed to hit two singles off the righty, said Bischoff has “owned” NU all four years he has played for Purdue.
“That’s just a credit to him,” Lashmet said. “He spots his fastball really well and he spots his slider. He throws a good, hard slider and knows where to put it.”
Sophomore Francis Brooke will take the mound for the Cats. The righty, who heads into the contest with a 4.53 conference ERA, said he’ll aim to keep Purdue’s players off base, since they have players with both speed and power in their lineup. Sophomore leadoff hitter Tyler Spillner leads the Big Ten in triples (7) and is eighth in stolen bases (18).
Stevens said his players are smart and understand the situation at hand: Win and advance to the tournament’s third round, lose and the season is over. All Stevens wants to remind his players is to “leave it all on the field.”
Lashmet is ready.
“Hopefully we’ll come out with a little more intensity than today and beat up on Bischoff,” he said. “Give him a loss for once in his life.”
