Triple play: Boilers drop rivalry series in 9th inning

Aaron Suval took his hat off in the ninth inning of Sunday’s game and pumped it through the air, a motion typically reserved for celebration.

His was for anything but.

After Purdue (31-17, 12-6 Big Ten) had maintained a 2-0 lead for much of the afternoon against the rival Indiana Hoosiers (27-19, 12-6), and expanded it to 4-1 as late as the ninth inning, the senior reliever Suval was brought in to put out a fire his teammate, Avery Cook, had started.

With runners on first and third, Suval fired four straight balls to Hoosier No. 8 hitter Jake Stadler. He walked in a run after losing a full-count battle the next at bat, and a walk and hard single right at his shin later, he had let Indiana tie the ballgame.

The hat-pumping moment came next.

Facing the Hoosiers’ cleanup hitter Tyler Cerny, Suval induced a soft, bouncing grounder which, according to the official scorer, should have at least sent the game into extra innings.

Instead, Suval was charged with a momentous error as the ball popped off the heel of his glove, sending an unprepared infield into chaos behind him as Cerny reached first with no throw and a runner drifted in for the game-deciding run; the Boilers mustered only two groundouts before a long fly out to center ended the game at 5-4.

Until then, it had been a banner day of pitching for the Boilers, with senior hurler Kyle Iwinski firing a six-inning, five-base-runner shutout followed by Cook allowing one run in two innings.

With the loss, Purdue fell from first place in the Big Ten to a three-way tie for second.

Here are three takeaways from Sunday’s defeat:

Will meltdowns haunt Purdue?

Sunday made it two straight days the Boilermakers had entered the seventh inning with a lead. But both ended in losses as Indiana outscored its opponent 15-1 thereafter across both games.

For a team like Purdue, in the thick of Big Ten title contention and on the bubble of the NCAA Tournament, the difference between a sweep of Indiana and a series loss could decide things for the committee and in the conference race by the end of the month.

The Boilers have two more series before the Big Ten Tournament on May 21, against sixth-place Michigan and first-place Illinois.

Fellow second-placers Indiana and Nebraska play each other before Nebraska faces seventh-place Michigan State and Indiana takes on Michigan.

Iwinski throws an ERA eraser

Iwinski’s season ERA when he first stepped off the mound Sunday was 7.26, worst on the team among pitchers with more than 10 innings. By the time he exited to rousing applause, it was over a full point lower at 6.08.

The power pitcher whose fastball can flirt with the mid-90s has actually improved his strikeouts per nine innings this season, from just under 5 to 5.2, but has failed to see it reflected in his run prevention thus far.

Attendance records flying like baseballs

Fans broke the attendance record at Alexander Field Wednesday against Depauw, with a crowd of 2,569. Then, on Saturday, with most students gone for the summer and campus entering ghost town season, the record fell again to the stream of 2,619 folks to the stands for Jimmy Buffet Day.

All told after Sunday’s couple thousand, the Boilers played in front of close to 10,000 people from Friday to Sunday. The crowd had partially mixed loyalties all weekend, as Indiana’s red-clad supporters carved out a section above the Hoosier dugout.

This came to a good-natured head in the seventh inning Sunday when, prompted by a “Let’s go Hoosiers” chant from the slice of red in the bleachers, “Let’s go Boilers” was echoed from across the diamond.

Purdue will spend the next week on the road, starting with a midweek clash at UIC on Tuesday.