Indiana baseball drops another one to Samford

Indiana’s hangover from their loss on Saturday transferred over to Sunday. After defeating the Hoosiers 6-5 on a walk-off home run on Saturday, Samford had all the momentum coming into the rubber game in their series with Indiana. The Hoosiers had nothing to counteract it with and lost 5-3.

Freshman pitcher Andrew Saalfrank could not lead his team to a victory due mainly to a disastrous defensive third inning.

After both teams went scoreless in the first two innings, Samford scored three runs in the Bottom of the 3rd after a string of Indiana mistakes. Sacrifice bunts by Taylor Garris and T.J. Dixon resulted in errors and both batters getting on base. Dixon’s bunt resulted in a run scored by Ryan Crockett. An RBI ground out from Branden Fryman scored Garris and Dixon scored on a wild pitch by Saalfrank to give the Bulldogs the early lead and a deep hole for Indiana to work out of going forward.

The Hoosiers tried to claw their way back into it in the fourth as Matt Lloyd scored on a sacrifice fly from Jeremy Houston. Another sacrifice fly from Houston in the sixth scored Matt Gorski and drew Indiana within a run at 3-2. However, Crockett’s 6th inning solo home run off of Cal Krueger put an end to any momentum the Hoosiers might have gained and gave Samford a 4-2 lead heading into the final three innings.

In the 7th, Ryan Fineman’s single brought in Luke Miller to bring Indiana within one run at 4-3 but Samford responded in the same inning again when Anthony Mulrine was hit by the Luke Stephenson pitch with bases loaded to bring in the final run of the game.

Despite Samford starting pitcher Stephen Jones’ five walks in five innings, Indiana was unable to capitalize on the opportunities they were given. The Hoosiers left 11 runners on base.

Jones (1-1) got the victory for Samford while junior Wyatt Jones recorded his fourth save on the year. Saalfrank (0-1), who went five innings and gave up just two earned runs and recorded four strikeouts, took the loss for Indiana.

Indiana (4-6-1) will travel to Evansville for their next game to take on the Evansville Purple Aces on Tuesday.