It doesn’t take much deliberation to come to the conclusion that Indiana’s floor of success this season is very high. After beating Evansville 8-0 in six innings on Wednesday, the Hoosiers have won 38 games, 21 of them via run rule.
As was the case against Evansville, Indiana has breezed to wins over inferior competition throughout the season. The Hoosiers have more wins via run rule than losses, and in total, have outscored their opponents by 244 runs.
After the win on Wednesday, Indiana head coach Shonda Stanton spoke on the importance of midweek success.
“It’s important to get momentum going into the weekend,” Stanton said. “Sometimes you can stub your toe on those midweeks, we have not done that.”
Blowout midweek wins, like the one against Evansville on Wednesday, are important to the reinforcement of a team’s confidence. They don’t do much in the way of impacting the perception of Indiana’s status, though. The Purple Aces join the long list of teams far from inclusion in the NCAA Tournament that have suffered blistering losses to the Hoosiers.
Therein lies the mystery that accompanies this Indiana squad. It’s clear, through all of its sustained strength and each of its blowout wins, that the floor of Indiana’s success is very high. What can’t be described with as much certainty is Indiana’s ceiling.
The question of how far this coaching staff can take this team with this roster is unanswerable until the postseason commences. Until then, the designation of fair expectations is driven almost entirely by speculation.
The Big Ten conference is not known for producing a great amount of championship contenders. For that reason, Indiana does not often encounter truly great competition, and therefore, isn’t often even faced with the opportunity to pass or fail such tests.
Accentuating this point is the fact that Indiana’s conference schedule features eight of the bottom nine teams in the Big Ten at this point in time. The Hoosiers have only one conference series against a team above that group on the schedule this season.
Notably, many of Indiana’s opportunities to face quality teams in contention for NCAA Tournament inclusion have resulted in close losses. For example, a 7-6 defeat against No. 22 Arizona State and a deflating 8-7 loss to No. 25 Louisville.
It’s obvious that Indiana is competitive against ranked teams, but it’s not quite as clear how close the Hoosiers are to toppling those foes. Indiana was in close quarters with both Arizona State and Louisville on the scoreboard late in each contest, but narrowly missed out on both opportunities to earn a landmark win.
The loss to Arizona State could reasonably be removed from consideration because it took place back in February. Holding the loss to Louisville against the Hoosiers could be considered unjust because Louisville scored its first of three regulation runs in part due to an umpire making contact with second baseman Aly VanBrandt in the field.
VanBrandt had her eyes up towards the ball during what is almost always a routine pop fly, but the impediment of the umpire caused VanBrandt to fall down and allowed a run to score. Louisville wound up winning by one run in the 10th inning.
No. 9 UCLA and No. 16 Oregon served as even greater tests. Even those, though, may not be truly representative of the limits to Indiana’s potential.
Oregon beat Indiana 24-12 in a game that contained 36 total runs and took place a day after Indiana played its last game of a weekend road series in College Park, Maryland. That loss, in part because of the absurdity of its result and in part because of the anomalous circumstances that surrounded it, is hardly useful for predictions of future performance.
UCLA swept Indiana in a weekend series in Los Angeles. However, Indiana lost by one run in the series opener, and was no more than a few strides behind the Bruins throughout the weekend. If that series were to be replayed, perhaps Indiana flips a 5-4 Friday loss into a 5-4 win, bringing the Hoosiers into the foreground of the conference championship picture.
The truth is, Indiana was swept by UCLA and did lose to Oregon by 12 runs. Even so, the nature of those losses permits the uncertainty of Indiana’s ceiling to continue to percolate.
In some leagues, contenders are tested each and every week. In the Big Ten, those examinations are experienced much more sparingly. With a weekend series against the 15-36 Illinois Fighting Illini on deck to end the season, a complete sense of clarity as it pertains to Indiana’s ceiling will not be revealed until the postseason.
Therein lies the mystery.
Blasting Evansville 8-0 in six innings doesn’t shift the narrative of Indiana’s season hardly at all. It reinforces the team’s confidence and adds to its upward momentum, but doesn’t paint the picture of its potential with any more detail than any other midweek run-rule victory.
Maybe Indiana is an overvalued team that has simply not yet been exposed. Or, maybe, it's a legitimate threat to the rest of the college softball world, which has not yet had the opportunity to unleash its full potential.
Time will tell. More importantly, the postseason and the inevitable opportunities to outduel quality competition that come with it, will tell. Until then, Indiana enjoys its obliteration of Evansville and prepares to put forth a similar display of strength against Illinois.
For the moment, the extent of Indiana’s ceiling remains a mystery.
