Baseball is a game of momentum and trends—and right now Indiana is fighting some tough ones that continue to resurface.
Indiana dropped its fourth consecutive conference game to fall to 7-11 on the season and 1-4 in Big Ten play. The Hoosiers mustered just two hits throughout the entire afternoon and fell to Oregon 5-1.
If there is one word to describe the first 18 games of the 2025-26 season, it is simple: inconsistency.
Indiana has not been able to come back late in games, find ways to win when not having an elite offensive night, and have not been able to help the pitching staff out by having timely offensive performances.
This is not to say that Indiana is not capable of putting things together. It has one of the more young, promising lineups not only in the Big Ten but in the country. With that, comes inconsistency.
It has a pitching staff that has shown flashes of dominant performances, but is also working in new arms and finding its rotation. With that, comes inconsistency.
There just haven’t been enough moments this year when things line up for the Cream and Crimson.
The Hoosiers have 36 games remaining. That is a lot of baseball, and a lot of time to flip trends and find consistency and a rhythm to make a major run in the conference.
It seems like common sense, but entering the weekend, Indiana was 0-3 in games scoring fewer than three runs, and 0-7 when getting out-hit by its opponent. The first of those trends was true once again on Friday, and unfortunately for the Hoosiers, Saturday saw both of the trends go the wrong way.
Indiana collected just two hits on Saturday, one of which being a solo home run from sophomore outfielder Cole Decker, the first of his career in the top of the third inning to tie the game at one. There was just one other hit in the remaining six innings of play.
Graduate student pitcher Tony Neubeck ran into his first struggles of the season, allowing five earned runs and seven hits over just four innings of work. The Indiana bullpen allowed just one hit over the next four innings of play. It was one of, if not the best performance from the bullpen this year.
The 5-1 lead after four innings was all that Oregon needed to take game two of the series.
It makes sense, if you don’t score, and get fewer hits, you are probably going to lose games. That’s baseball 101, however, and there have been no signs of these trends flipping soon.
One thing that you normally see with trends is an outlier here or there. So far this year, there have been no outliers in Indiana’s negative trends. The Hoosiers are now 0-8 when trailing after six innings, 0-9 when trailing after eight innings and 0-7 when allowing more than six runs this year.
Step one, should be to break out of these negative trends that have been the story of Indiana this year. The Hoosiers get a chance to break a major trend as early as Sunday. Indiana enters Sunday’s matchup 0-4 in game three of weekends this year. First pitch from Eugene is slated for 3:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday on Big Ten Plus.
