Thomas struggles with command early and Hoosier bats don’t pressure Gopher pitching
By Carl James @jovian34 March 23rd, 2026
Indiana Hoosiers: 2, Minnesota Golden Gophers: 14 (8 innings)
Inning by inning details in the Live Game Blog | Box Score
“Sometimes when you’ve been beat-up a little bit and all of a sudden your arm feels good, you kind of lose feel for it a little.”
— head coach Jeff Mercer
The Hoosiers had managed to overcome a poor start to beat Minnesota on Friday, but three comebacks in three days was too tall an order for a Hoosier team that had relied on 11 innings of bullpen usage already to clinch the series.
Brayton Thomas struggled with command and only got five outs in an abbrevated start, allowing six runs with three free passes. After the game, head coach Jeff Mercer said, “You’ve got to give BT some grace. Brayton’s been really good for us. He felt really good today. Sometimes when you’ve been beat-up a little bit and all of a sudden your arm feels good, you kind of lose feel for it a little.”
Veteran righty Pete Haas got the ball next. Haas has been the guy they turn to throw strikes and eat innings, but he was also struggling a bit with command and gave up another run in 1.1 innings of work. Down 7-0 after three innings, Mercer was no longer going to bring back the arms that threw Friday. “I didn’t want to bring Jacobi back today, or Sarhatt back today with the score the way it was, that’s how you get guys hurt. If you get somebody hurt down 11 to 1, probably not very wise.”
Minnesota starter Marcus Kruzan allowed some hard contact, but never got into any trouble in 3.2 innings of work. Despite seemingly cruising with a low pitch count, Minnesota wasn’t going to let the Hoosier hitters get used to him like they did with Isaac Morton on Saturday, and switched things up to finish off the fourth inning. Indiana only managed 2 runs on three hits on the day facing three different Gopher arms across 8 innings. Jake Hanley had another multi-hit day for Indiana caping a tremendous week at the plate.
Indiana did have a couple of bright spots in the game. Freshman pitcher Xavier Carrera got out of a jam to put up a 0 in his inning of work. Merecr highlighted it, “Bases loaded with the Carrera inning turn a really nice, tough double play.” He also highlighted that “[Cole] Decker makes several tremendous catches today.”
Indiana is now defending at .973 on the season with just one error in the last seven games (none in the last six conference games). “I’ve been a bear on them about our ability to play defense.”
Indiana gets one more game in the home stand, a non-conference mid-week vs. Indiana State at 6pm Tuesday. LHP Conner Linn will get the start for the Hoosiers after an excellent outing last week at Vanderbilt. Coach Mercer thinks Linn has potential for to be a weekend starter, and said if it goes well, it’s possible Linn would get skipped the next week to line up for the weekend.
Linn will be competing with current Friday starter Reagan Rivera. “Reagan’s been a little more of a hit-or-miss. You’re not sure what you are going to get from him on a day-to-day basis. So maybe he needs to be more consistent and give us some length or Conner can slide into the weekend.” Mercer also mentioned freshman Ivan Mastalski, “I think Mastalski is a guy that you can lengthen out. He’s got multiple pitches with a strike. He’s got to get better with guys on second base, but that’s more of a typical freshman thing.”