That’s baseball, as they say.
Purdue (33-20, 13-9 Big Ten) came up one run short of prolonging its Big Ten title hopes against Illinois (31-17, 16-6) on Thursday night, losing 5-4 as a result of singular pitches gone wayward and fly balls that couldn’t find a gust of wind to take them over the fence.
“The guys played absolutely awesome,” head coach Gregg Goff said. “That’s what it looks like when you get two of the top teams in the league playing. That’s what it looks like.”
The Illini jumped on senior lefty starter Jordan Morales, whose number was painted on the foul side of the infield grass for Saturday’s senior night, for five runs in the first two frames.
He began by mixing in strikeouts with hard hit balls, but the hard hits were stymied from the second inning on.
That’s when the Boilers’ bats woke up and made a game of things. After a three-up, three-down first inning, a Purdue batter advanced to third base every inning but the third until a late drought did the Boilers in.
Purdue went hitless from the seventh on, even while the relievers kept the game tight enough for fans to stay, with supporters dotting the bleachers the whole way through while sitting under the view of head basketball coach Matt Painter as he watched from a box suite.
Unstoppable force beats immovable object – at first
Morales was untouchable a week ago against Michigan, but the difference is that the blue and maize rank ninth in runs in Big Ten games. Illinois inspires quite a bit more fear, sitting at first in that statistic.
Morales baffled the Illini, and at the same time was confounded. The senior recorded seven strikeouts, six swinging, to the effect that on one plate appearance a harmless bat would flail through the zone while on the next the metal would send a ring through the stadium as it cracked into leather-wrapped yarn.
That stopped after the second inning, though, for Morales and everybody else. The Illini were kept off home plate for seven-straight innings, putting Purdue in an excruciating game of catchup for most of the night.
Bullpen steps up…
Goff said earlier in the week that his hook on pitchers wouldn’t necessarily be any faster because of the fearsome Illini lineup, only that he had more throwing options healthy with the recovery of multiple arms.
It played out that way in the top of the seventh, when Davis Pratt was shown the door after a runner reached on an error by third baseman Jo Stevens. Possibly, the stakes were just too high to have anyone but Avery Cook in the game, as the burly Cook was indeed called upon and did his job, if dangerously.
He walked two to load the bases, but it was what he did in between that kept Illinois at arm’s length.
Twice, with sweat beading off his eyebrows, Cook stared down his opponent from 60 feet away with his leg co*cked, shoulders angled and head down like a desperado with a revolver on his belt.
Twice he was locked in full counts, and twice the redshirt senior put all of his 6-feet-6 inches and 235 pounds into yet another fastball Illinois could not keep up with. He whiffed two Illini to stay clean.
“I didn’t have my best stuff tonight,” Cook said. “But I think I just have more confidence in my fastball. Just had to find a way to get it done.”
…In time for bats to go cold
It was 5.54 ERA reliever Ben Plumley who sat the Boilers’ down for two pivotal innings, as the sophom*ore punched out three Boilermakers and only allowed one hit with the game a 5-4 drama.
Plumley set the table for his counterpart, Joe Glassey, in the ninth inning. Glassey also came in with an ERA above five, this time to face three Boilermaker upper classmen threatening to tie, two batting from the top of the order.
Glassey induced a groundout from senior outfield Couper Cornblum first. Then it was senior Mike Bolton Jr.’s turn.
Bolton settled himself into a 1-1 count before sending a ball high and in the air to the outfield. But the 160-pound Bolton’s swing, quick and little like him, did not generate the requisite power to send one out.
Finally, the sparsely played Breck Nowik, who had just come off the bench to spell sophom*ore shortstop Camden Gasser, stepped into the box.
Gasser leads the Big Ten in on-base percentage, but Goff felt he hadn’t had a good enough night, at 0-for-4, to justify a fifth chance.
“You evaluate that and make decisions,” Goff said. “You got to with your gut.”
Nowik took the battle to a full count, taking the noise out of the place so that fans with good seats may have had a chance to hear him breathing. Nowick stepped back in for that final pitch, tapping his left foot twice in quick succession to ready himself.
Glassey sent in a pitch, and Nowik bent his knees low as he watched it go by. It punched the catcher’s mit and Nowik tossed his bat aside, convinced he’d walked.
The umpire wasn’t so convinced.
He pumped his fist for the strikeout and incited opposing reactions from the two sides of the diamond, as Illinois stormed the diamond and Nowick and fans threw up their hands in disbelief.
Goff said he didn’t have a great view of the pitch, and that he would probably look at it on film tomorrow to make his opinion of the call. Camera ball-tracking visualization showed it just nipped the bottom of the preset strike zone.
The Illini reportedly celebrated their win at AJ’s.
