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Who
Indiana Hoosiers (7-8) vs Canisius Golden Griffins (4-10)
Where
Bart Kaufman Field, Bloomington, Indiana
When
Friday, March 15, 4 p.m.
Saturday, March 16, 12:05 p.m.
Saturday, March 16, Following Game 1
Sunday, March 17, Noon
Probable Starters
Friday: TBA vs TBA
Saturday: TBA vs TBA
Saturday: TBA vs TBA
Sunday: TBA vs TBA
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Preview
The Hoosiers are coming off possibly their most embarrassing loss of the season, falling 7-5 against a Cincinnati team that barely scraped into the top 100 in RPI in 2018. IU blew a 4-1 lead, tied it up at 5-5, and then blew that too.
Following that loss the Hoosiers are sub-.500 on the season and need to get back on track as they’ve lost their last three games. Luckily for them, a reeling Canisius squad is heading to Bloomington for a four-game set this weekend.
Over the last four seasons the Golden Griffins have made a pair of NCAA Regionals, so they’re a solid mid-major opponent, but they’ve struggled so far this season. They’ve only won one series so far, that was against Charlotte, but they do have other wins against North Carolina Central and Dayton. Canisius also got swept by Kentucky in a three-game set in Lexington and lost to Wright State and West Virginia so they’ve played a fairly tough schedule.
So far this season Andrew Sipowicz has been the most productive of the Canisius starters. The senior comes into the weekend with a 4.00 earned run average and has yet to earn a win, but in back-to-back starts he’s held Kentucky and Wright State both to one run over five innings.
Jake Burlingame has led the Griffs at the plate this season. The junior outfielder has the best batting average on the team—a .293 mark. He’s also 7/7 on stolen base attempts and holds an 11 game on-base streak.
What to Expect
The Hoosiers should take a series win here. A sweep would be ideal, of course, but as we’ve seen as recently as Wednesday baseball is unpredictable. Neither team had announced its starting pitchers as of Thursday evening so one interesting thing will be to see who IU will go with in the rotation behind Pauly Milto. A few easy guesses will be the only other pitchers that have gotten weekend starts this season—Tanner Gordon, Tommy Sommer, and Andrew Saalfrank.