Hoosiers blunder nine-run lead behind inexperienced arms and idle offense
By Zach Horwitz @HorwitzZach March 29th, 2025
photos by Carl James
“We don’t lose the game in the ninth. We lost the game there [in the sixth]. Where you can’t have a bunch of free bases in a big inning.”
— Head Coach Jeff Mercer
Indiana Hoosiers 12, Southern California Trojans 13
Inning by inning details in the Live Game Blog | Box Score
After going up 12-3 through four innings, Indiana’s offense coasted, as they hadn’t plated a run the rest of the contest. Head Coach Jeff Mercer mentioned postgame how USC’s game plan shifted away from the scouting report.
“They went back to typical hard stuff with more fastballs, when we did a great job yesterday with the soft stuff. We just didn’t turn the timing back around.”
What had seemed like a dominant approach at the dish began with Devin Taylor. The third-year man out of Cincinnati, OH continues to mash, as he went to the opposite field for his second home run of the week. Taylor now stands two homers away from the all-time Indiana program record.
Friday night’s long ball fest continued as Korbyn Dickerson took the Big Ten conference lead in homers with two on the day, while Tyler Cerny added one. Despite that, the lineup looked complacent against Southern California’s low-leverage arms out of the bullpen.
On the pitching side, Indiana faltered at an exceedingly quick rate. Ben Grable got the start for Indiana but wasn’t himself on the health side.
“Grable didn’t feel good yesterday playing catch but he was a warrior to go out and take the ball today. He’s thrown 100 pitches last week and you have a short start, doubleheader yesterday.”
The transfer righty tossed three quality innings behind a lead before handing it off to left-hander Anthony Gubitosi. With a limited track record, Gubitosi dealt a good hand for the majority of his outing until he lost control in the sixth inning. Indiana leading by nine runs at the time felt like a comfortable lead but the snowball effect was in play.
The junior southpaw suffered three consecutive walks to load the bases with nobody out. Jeff Mercer reflects on the decision:
“My fear was just free bases, and we walked the bases loaded which was my fault. We don’t lose the game in the ninth inning, we lost the game there.”
Mercer, in his seventh season at the helm, took the blame for the long-awaited pitching change, mentioning “you try to pride yourself on making good decisions and putting guys in the best position to succeed.” He felt like he didn’t do so in that situation.
The Hoosiers went on with Caleb Koskie and Aydan Decker-Petty before Trey Telfer held the short lead in check in the eighth. The freshman then trotted out to the mound for his second inning of work until Brayden Dowd smoked a two-run shot to snag the lead with one out in the top half of the ninth. Indiana went on to tally a hit in the home half, but had nothing to show for it.
Despite a bullpen short of trusty arms, Indiana still never truly had the game in hand. Mercer told his group “you have 24 hours to feel bad about something that went against you, and you have 24 hours to get up, move on, and move forward.
With half of the schedule down and an at-large bid slowly diminishing, Indiana will certainly need to turn the page quickly with a top-50 RPI opponent in Louisville coming to town for Tuesday’s midweek matchup.