Heading into Sunday, Indiana baseball (5-7) was looking to avoid a series loss against a mid-major, the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers (7-6) of Conference USA. The defending conference champions took a 2-1 series lead into Sunday.
The Hoosiers, largely thanks to the efforts of designated hitter Brayden Ricketts, defeated WKU in a must-win on Sunday, 7-3 in Bowling Green, Kentucky to salvage a split of the series.
The redshirt freshman from Brampton, Ontario—batting in the third spot of the order Sunday—reached base in all five of his plate appearances.
Ricketts’ three hits Sunday were all for extra bases: a pair of long home runs to right field, along with an opposite field double. He drove in five of Indiana’s seven runs across those three at-bats.
His other two plate appearances resulted in walks. Ricketts has hit in eight straight while reaching safely in 10 consecutive games.
The left-handed slugger was largely unknown to Indiana fans before the beginning of 2026. Ricketts didn’t play at all in his true freshman season in 2025.
However, when you dive deeper into the context, his breakout should come to the surprise of absolutely nobody.
First of all, Ricketts is naturally a great athlete. Both of his parents are former Division I athletes. His mom, Lauren, played softball at Niagara University, while his dad, Peter, played hockey at the same school.
After not playing at all in the spring of 2025, Ricketts headed down to Pulaski, Virginia, to spend a summer with the Pulaski River Turtles of the Appalachian League, a collegiate summer-ball league.
There, Ricketts showed exactly why he was a highly-touted prospect coming out of Canada (No. 2 catcher in Ontario in the class of 2024 according to Perfect Game’s rankings). In 38 games, Ricketts slashed .333/.477/.500 for an OPS just shy of 1.000. He recorded 14 extra base hits, drove in 35 runs, walked more than he struck out, and started in the all-star game.
Ricketts’ breakout summer certainly didn’t go unnoticed by the Indiana coaching staff. One game after making his first start against North Carolina on Feb. 14, head coach Jeff Mercer moved Ricketts up to the three spot in the order, desperate for a spark after a quiet opening weekend from the bats.
After an 0-for-4 showing against Bradley in the opening game of Ricketts’ promotion, Mercer could’ve easily ended the experiment right then and there.
The Indiana skipper decided to keep Ricketts in the same spot of the order for the Live Like Lou Jacksonville Baseball Classic. To say that decision has paid massive dividends for the offense would be a massive understatement.
Including Sunday, across his last eight games—all of them coming as the designated hitter batting third—Ricketts is 15-for-31 (.484) with five extra-base hits and nine runs batted in.
Not only is Ricketts a big-time player in the power game, he is also a professional hitter who takes quality at-bats and knows how to work out walks when he needs to. When he gets down in counts, he can drive the ball to left field with just as much power as he can to his pull side.
Ricketts’ breakout has taken some of the pressure off of Indiana’s most important bats, including Jake Hanley and Hogan Denny.
Hanley, after a slow start to the season, has raised his batting average to .327 during his current six-game hitting streak. Denny, who has batted cleanup the last five games, has continued to mash at the plate while reaching base safely in all 11 of his starts.
The offense as a whole is averaging more than seven runs per game since Ricketts’ first start in the three hole of the lineup. IU averaged three runs per game in the three games prior to Ricketts’ promotion.
Ricketts’ defense is pretty much a non-factor, at least for now, but as alluded to before the season, as long as he is mashing at the rate he currently is, having his bat in the lineup every night is an absolute must.
With his play over the last eight games, Ricketts has not only asserted himself into this lineup consistently, he has a top-three spot in the order on lockdown for the foreseeable future.
Ricketts will look to continue his hot start as Indiana returns home to face Northern Kentucky on Tuesday, March 3. First pitch is set for 5 p.m. ET.
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