MSU baseball: One down ...
And as senior center fielder Brandon Eckerle succinctly put it after the Spartans' 7-1 win over Purdue: "Two more wins, and we'll have another championship."
But it won't be easy for MSU against top-seeded Illinois. The Illini, who took two of three from the Spartans in their April series in Champaign, stunned Ohio State with a four-run bottom of the ninth to win 5-4 in Thursday's other winners bracket game, which didn't wrap up until 11:30 p.m. It's their fifth straight last at-bat comeback victory, four of them coming in the ninth inning. To put it mildly, Illinois is the hottest team in the Big Ten right now.
The second-seeded Spartans will start right-hander Tony Bucciferro (8-2, 3.22 ERA) in Friday's semifinal. The junior allowed four runs and seven hits in six innings against Illinois back on April 23, taking the loss. The Illini are just 26-25 overall but now have won six straight and shared the Big Ten title with MSU, getting the tourney's top seed by virtue of taking that April series. That means the Illini are the home team and get the last at-bat, which obviously has become their forte.
MSU's third-game starter, win or lose, should be Andrew Waszak (4-3, 4.63). Should he need a fourth starter, coach Jake Boss likely would give the ball to freshman David Garner, who started eight games before rounding into a late-game role in the bullpen.
With Kurt Wunderlich's impressive Thursday performance -- eight innings, including a 2-hour, 15-minute rain delay -- MSU's bullpen is well-rested for Friday's game with Illinois. First pitch is scheduled for 7:05 p.m. EDT, barring rain delays and extra-inning games in the earlier contests.
Though Boss didn't rule out Wunderlich for the rest of the weekend, the right-hander threw 121 pitches Thursday. Boss said he and his staff talked during the rain delay about inserting sophomore Waszak into Thursday's game to keep Wunderlich -- who, at that point, had thrown 54 pitches in the first three innings -- fresh for later in the tourney. But the senior Wunderlich swayed them into keeping him on the mound, with obviously positive effects.
In the losers bracket Friday, the stunned Buckeyes must make a quick turnaround to face Minnesota (for the second time in three days) at 12:05 p.m. The loser of that game is eliminated, with the winner moving on to face Purdue immediately afterward at 3:35.
