Hoosiers vow not to take Penguins lightly

May 30, 2014 at 12:00a.m.

It’s doubtful the Indiana baseball team will take a Horizon League opponent lightly anymore.

Even one that enters today’s NCAA regional tournament with the lowest winning percentage of any participant since at least 2001.

That’s because the Hoosiers got a scare in their opening game of last year’s regional when Valparaiso took a 4-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning in Bloomington, Ind. The home side rallied for four runs and won on a walk-off home run, but the message was delivered loud and clear.

“Yeah, that’s just how baseball is,” Hoosiers senior Joey DeNato said Thursday at the team’s press conference. “Baseball is a game where any team can beat any team, no matter what their record is or how deep their lineup is. That’s just the way it is.”

That’s what this year’s Horizon League representative, Youngstown State, is hoping for. The Penguins (16-36) collected a quarter of their win-total in last week’s conference tournament and have a winning percentage of just .308.

The only number Indiana (42-13) is concerned about now is the one that got YSU to Bloomington in the first place.

“The thing that I know is that they’re hot,” Hoosiers coach Tracy Smith said. “I mean any time you win four games in a row, and there’s some quality opponents in the Horizon League when they got to the championship rounds, obviously they’re playing good baseball.

“I’ve said it a lot about baseball. You can be good, but this is the one sport that it doesn’t matter if you’re physically bigger than the other opponent or you out-size them or out-strength them. It takes one guy, and we saw it last year in the regional. It takes one guy that can quiet down 4,000 people, 5,000 people, and that’s the guy on the mound.”

For YSU, that will be sophomore Jared Wight. For Indiana, it’s yet to be determined, according to Smith.

“The luxury of playing the second game is that it gives us time to evaluate the other team’s players,” Smith said. “Right now we’re preparing, really to me, four options of guys that we would consider starting in DeNato, [Evan] Bell, [Brian] Korte and [Scott] Effross.

“We’ll wait and make a decision once we kind of see maybe who potentially we could be facing, taking nothing for granted with Youngstown [State].”

Whoever the Hoosiers hand the ball to will provide the toughest test the Penguins have faced all year. Indiana ranks third in NCAA Division I in team ERA at 2.17. YSU’s team batting average is .256, but that doesn’t mean the approach will change.

“One thing I think they’ve done a really good job of is playing against the game and not against the opponent,” Penguins coach Steve Gillispie said. “Phil Lipari led off all four games with a base hit [in Horizon tournament] and we had the lead in the first inning after our at-bats each game.

“It’s imperative that we just stay in the moment of each pitch, not get caught up in the crowd and who we’re playing, and again, play against the game and not the opponent.”

Lipari, a Poland High grad, and Josh White are the only two Penguins with batting averages north of .300. Lipari also leads the team with 56 runs scored and five home runs and will be a crucial part of this weekend’s game plan.

“It’s going to be great to be out here,” Lipari said at the team’s press conference on Thursday after a practice in Bloomington. “The crowd is going to be awesome. We are going be out there the same as we were in the Horizon tournament — we are not going to be awestruck — we are just going to go out there and nobody is expecting anything of us but ourselves.”