Technically, they may not be the BEST quality photos I’ve taken but they are my favorites from this year.

The sun setting in the west beyond Illinois Field after a game.

Anyone who’s followed Josh Parr knows he’s made amazing progress in the field in just one year.  He’s saved Illinois many runs with his glove.

Willie Argo getting some air time stealing second.

I love getting shots of emotion.  This photo of Willie Argo was taken right after he scored in the comeback win in our first home game against Indiana State.

I just like the look on Pete Cappetta’s face as he motors into third base.

Matt Dittman gets a quick respite as he stands safely on third base.

All eyes follow the foul ball.

It might be worth looking at a larger version of photo.  The look on each player’s face shows how excited they are about Casey McMurray’s homerun in the last game of the year against Indiana.

Wes Braun comes off the field after one of many successful innings off the mound.

Matt Dittman mentally prepping for the first game against Indiana.

Josh Parr slides in for a triple against Indiana.

Pitcher Bryan Roberts was out for 2011 but he played an integral role in the dugout keeping it real.

Iowa head coach Jack Dahm expresses his opinion to the umpire

I don’t know why I like this photo of Brandon Hohl standing in the edge of the dugout but it’s one of my favorites.  .

Justin Parr always as an intense look on his face when on the field.  Here he his after scoring against Iowa.

These photos aren’t in any order of preference but I am saving the best for last.  This shot of Matt Dittman’s Big Ten title-clinching homerun trot is one of favorite photos I’ve taken.  There’s something about a smile on player knowing what he has helped accomplished for his team.

Your favorite??

Let’s take a quick look at both games of the Fullerton Regionals so far:

Cal State Fullerton 10  Illinois 4

If you didn’t watch or listen to the game on Friday night, you might be forgiven if you thought this was a blowout by the Titan squad.  The game was a whole lot closer than the score makes it appear.  In fact, it wasn’t until the 8th inning when CSF put the writing on the wall when they sealed with three runs. Until then, it only a three run game.

And before that, Illinois had control of the game.  Matt Dittman gave us more of the same with a 2nd inning homerun giving Illinois a 2-0 lead.  Fullerton did score four runs in the fourth and fifth innings but Illinois battled and tied it up on a Casey McMurray single in the sixth.

Unfortunately, that was about all the Illini magic left for this game.  Titan pitcher Tyler Pill held the Illini to no more runs and even managed to drive in two of his own.

Illinois 5  Kansas State 3

On Saturday, the Kansas State Wildcats scored the first run of the game in the second but once Illinois erased that lead in the next half inning, there seemed to be no doubt who was in control of the game.

In the third, Josh Parr followed up a Davis Hendrickson triple with a double of his own.  Parr scored later on a sac fly thanks to brother Justin.  The next inning, the Illini scored three more keyed by a triple by Josh Parr, again.

For the game, Josh Parr was 2 for 4 with a double , triple and three rbis.

But let’s face it, the real story of Saturday’s game was John Anderson.  He went into the 9th inning (rumor has it he didn’t want to come out).  Only giving up one earned run for those eight full innings, the win gives Anderson an 8-6 record.

Chris Pack came in for a perfect ninth inning for his 4th save of the year.

What now?

What now?  Basically in the context of the Fullerton Regional, Illinois is in ‘can’t lose’ mode.  Cal State Fullerton who was upset by Stanford yesterday 1-0, is on the docket for tonight.  Both teams are 1-1 in the tournament.  Let’s put it this way, Illinois has a chance to eliminate the Titans from the Regionals.  If that’s not incentive for Corey Kimes and the Illini, I don’t know what is.  Revenge could be sweet.

The winner of tonight’s game will go on to play Stanford but would have to beat them twice to advance to the Super Regionals.  Sound familiar?  Illinois was in Stanford’s enviable position in the Big Ten Tournament with Michigan State.

Here are the NCAA Regional brackets.  Click on the Fullerton bracket for a more detailed look.

Tonight’s game is on Sunday 6:00pm CT.  You can watch it on ESPNU and ESPN3. Fightingillini.com has the live stats and audio.

Go Illini!

Meanwhile, the Big Ten All-Tournament Team has been announced.  No surprise here.. The Illini did pretty well.

Starters John Anderson and Corey Kimes were named for their respective outstanding performances.  Catcher Adam Davis who besides doing a fine job behind the plate, went 5 for 13 with 3 doubles.  Center fielder Willie Argo got 5 hits and stole four bases.  I’ve already talked about Justin Parr’s qualifications for the All-Tournament team.  I’m glad he was chosen. He ended up 6 for 14 and scored three  times.

But Matt Dittman, rumor has it he’s pretty popular now with Illinois baseball fans.  Both of his hits were homeruns and one of them was a grand slam against Michigan State for a total of five rbis.  And don’t forget, though Dittman (right) didn’t get a hit in the wild Ohio State game, he scored the winning run in the bottom of the ninth, too.

Who did they leave off?  If I could place one more Illini player on the team, who would it be?  Well, it would be hard to displace Minnesota’s AJ Pettersen but Josh Parr had an excellent tournament at shortstop making some excellent plays. He went 4 for 13 and drove in three runs and scored two.  He might have been my choice.

Here is the complete All-Tournament Team

2011 Big Ten Baseball All-Tournament Team

P – John Anderson, ILL
P – Corey Kimes, ILL
P – Kurt Wunderlich, MSU
P – Tom Windle, MINN
C – Adam Davis, ILL
1B – Matt Dittman, ILL
2B – Matt Puhl, MINN
3B – Torsten Boss, MSU
SS – AJ Pettersen, MINN
OF – Willie Argo, ILL
OF – Justin Gominsky, MINN
OF – Brian DeLucia, OSU
OF – Tyler Spillner, PUR
DH – Justin Parr, ILL

Congratulations to John, Corey, Adam, Matt, Willie and Justin!!!

Starting pitcher Corey Kimes threw a career high 9 innings and seven strikeouts and seemed to have the Spartans fooled.  Giving up no walks on the day, it was Kimes’ fourth win on the year and one of his strongest starts on the year no doubt fueled by the importance of the win.

Meanwhile, a very spent Spartan pitching staff had trouble catching up.  Freshman starter Chase Rihtarchik lasted less than three innings when he gave up four runs.  All told, MSU went through seven pitchers and it seemed Illinois batters found a way to get through to most of them.

All nine Illini starters got at least one hit, some more.  Poor Matt Dittman.  He only got one but he got the kind of hit that comes with four rbis.  A grand slam in the 3rd inning which put the score at 5-0.  It was Dittman’s second homerun in the Tournament and fourth in six games.

An inning later, Josh Parr and Pete Cappetta hit back-to-back doubles followed later by a triple by Brandon Hohl.  As a matter of fact, six extra base hits were hit in the game.  Adam Davis and Justin Parr also hit doubles.

All game, it appeared the Illini were playing loose and as result, things came easy or at least seemed to.  More importantly, it looked like they were having fun.  The look on Justin Parr’s face as he scored in the first inning was awesome.

Here’s Adam Davis, Matt Dittman and Corey Kimes getting interviewed by the Big Ten Network after tonight’s game (plus a few highlights).

This was Illinois’ eighth victory in a row and 16th of their last 20 games.  So what’s next?  The NCAA Regionals, of course.  They get the automatic bid being the Big Ten Tournament Champion.  It’s not known if there will be an at-large selection (if there were, it would be Michigan State) but pundits who know more than I are saying that the chances are slim.  The NCAA Selection will be announced Monday.

Congratulations to the Illinois Fighting Illini Baseball team on a job well done!

We can thank starter John Anderson (right) for the lack of dramatics.  He simply kept Spartan batters at bay for seven plus innings.  As a matter of fact, MSU was kept scoreless for the first seven innings.  When Jeff Holm scored on a Jared Hook double in eighth, Coach Hartleb brought in Chris Pack to relieve.  It reminded me of the first few weeks of the season when those two paired up often.  Pack was perfect in an inning and two-thirds getting his third save.

Meanwhile, the Illini had already gotten the lead they needed.  In the second, Adam Davis doubled home Justin Parr for a run.  Two innings later, Josh Parr doubled home Casey McMurray and Davis Hendrickson.  For some insurance, Matt Dittman showed the Tournament crowd a little bit of what we saw last weekend.  He hit a home run BLAST to the right field which bounced back almost to the infield.

Looking ahead

Illinois gets to rest until Saturday night while Michigan State and Minnesota battle it out.  The loser of that game goes home but the winner goes on to play Illinois for the evening game.

If Illinois wins, they win the Tournament Championship.  If they don’t,  the same teams play on Sunday for the Championship.

What does this mean, really?

A lot of things actually but Illinois is sitting in the driving seat.

1) Illinois hasn’t lost yet and to get eliminated from the tourney, a team needs to lose two games.  Either Minnesota or Michigan State will have to win three straight games (one against the other and two against Illinois) to win it all.  Illinois just needs to win tomorrow night’s game.

2)  Rest.  Going into tomorrow night’s game against Illinois, the winner of the MSU-Minn game will have just played a full game and will be expected to go out and play another with about an hour’s rest.  (Some could make a valid argument that a win would bring them momentum and sitting around takes that out of you.)

3)  If Minnesota takes Michigan State in tomorrow’s loser’s bracket game, pitching will be an issue.  I’ve seen this happen in other Tournaments.  Keep in mind that tomorrow’s game against MSU will be the Golden Gophers’ fifth game in four days.  Starting pitchers are going on little rest and you can expect to see the bullpen early.

However this turns out, I’m looking for Justin Parr to get All-Tournament honors.  In just two games, he’s gone 5 for 9 with 2 rbis and 2 runs scored.  But please, BTN announcers, no more Parr/par jokes.  We’ve heard them.

Go Illini!

Hehe, I can’t pull that complacent shtick off, I am psyched as all get out.  Maybe I got worried a bit watching the Illinois-Ohio State game on my friend’s wide screen TV in his basement but I’ll tell you this:  When we were down 4-1 in eighth inning, I told my friend, “just wait, they’ll come back”.  And so they did winning 5-4 over the Ohio State Buckeyes. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We need to address the matter of Kevin Johnson.  Johnson (left) in my opinion, was pitching one of the best games of the his season.  He was painting the outside corners like a French Impressionist.  I’m used to watching the games from the left field lines and not from the pitcher’s angle, that’s new to me, does he pitch like that ALL the time?  Aside from a solo shot to Buckeye Brian DeLucia, Johnson was practically unhittable.

That is, until the eighth inning when a ball hit in front of Willie Argo missed his glove and Argo slipped on the wet turf going after it. When all was said and done,  Greg Solomon had cleared the bases with a inside the park homerun.  Chris Pack came in to relieve after one more single but couldn’t stop a run-scoring double.  The score after 8 innings:  4-1.  My thought when Pack came in, there goes any chance for a win for Johnson no matter how much he deserves it.

But Pack was fantastic in the top of ninth.  After a leadoff walk, he retired the OSU batters three in a row.

Now what I saying about a comeback walk-off win?  Oh yeah!   The Buckeyes had uber-star firstbaseman/closer Josh Desze on the mound.  From what I can gather, Desze is the real thing (he has already been drafted by the Yankees out of high school).  Not only can he hit (42 rbis) but he can throw the ball hard.  His velocity on pitches last night hovered around 92-96 mph.  But there is a downfall to this freshman.  He tends to be a little wild.  He already game two walks in the 8th inning.  Why is that important?  It brought the top of the Illini lineup for the 9th inning.

Pete Cappetta lined a full count double into left center to lead the inning off.  He advanced to third on a Desze wild pitch and then scored on a Justin Parr base hit.  An out and another wild pitch later, Parr was on third, down by 2.  A base hit by Brandon Hohl drove home Parr making it 4-3.

By now, I was nodding my head and saying, ‘See? See?’ to my friend. ‘They’re going to come back!

Pat Sheehan ran for Hohl at first.  An out later, Matt Dittman walked putting runners on first and second.  Willie Argo (‘eager to atone’ claim the broadcasters) banged out a game tying single which in my opinion could have easily had gotten Sheehan out at the plate if the throw would have been on line.  Fortunately, it wasn’t.  Tie game.

Finally, Davis Hendrickson, hero of last Saturday’s game against Indiana, was once again the go-to guy.  Hendrickson (left) hit the first pitch up the middle for a single scoring Matt Dittman and winning the game 5-4.

Here is a link to the video press conference after the game with Coach Hartleb, Davis Hendrickson and Willie Argo

A couple notes on the game:

This was reliever Chris Pack’s 7th win of the year.  He now leads all Illini in wins for the season.

Pete Cappetta and Justin Parr came into the game leading  the Big Ten in hitting in conference play.  For the night, they both had three hits.

Willie Argo didn’t look pretty on that Solomon inside the park homerun but let’s face it.  We’ve seen four of five instances of outfielders slipping and sliding out there.  Knowing Willie, he was hustling and his feet were just ahead of his body

Heard an interesting stat last night:  Illinois has outscored their opponents in the ninth inning or later by a 40-10 margin.  Somehow I’m not surprised by that stat.

In other news and looking ahead

Earlier Thursday, Michigan State had no trouble with Purdue beating them 7-1 behind the pitching of Kurt Wunderlich.

And even before that, Minnesota sent Penn State packing for home defeating them 8-2.

With Illinois’ win, they will face they only other undefeated team in the tourney, Michigan State.  As long as the weather cooperates, game time is set for 6pm CT.  An advantage for the Illini?  They won’t have to face Pitcher of the Year Wunderlich who pitched yesterday.

and this just in as I’m typing this:  Today, Minnesota knocks Ohio State out of the tournament winning 9-4.

Last bit o’ commentary

I can’t emphasize how important tonight’s game will be.  These two teams are the only two undefeated teams left.  Is it the precursor to the Big Ten Tournament Championship game?  Maybe.  I will say the winning team comes out of tonight’s game in a very good spot.  The ultimate goal after all is to not lose two games and both MSU and Illinois have done their best to avoid that.

Minnesota fans have to be happy with the Golden Gophers, though.  After their initial loss to Ohio State in the very first game of the Tournament, they have struck back to win two in a row including a revenge win against the Buckeyes.  Keep your eye on them.

Big Ten Network Schedule and Results

Updated Tournament Bracket

press conference

The Chicago Tribune interviewed walk-off hero Matt Dittman

The Daily Illini has a couple of interesting articles.  One on the missing trophy (stupid policy in my opinion) and another preview of the Tournament.  A quick kudos to the DI for their extensive coverage of Illini Baseball ALL season.  I hope they continue that next year.)

And since all games at the Big Ten Baseball Tournament will be televised you might be find the Big Ten Network TV Schedule link useful.

Good luck, Illini!!

Matt Dittman got the Big Ten Player of the Week award this week.  He better have after his walk-off performance on Saturday.

But Ditt actually had a great weekend independent of his walk-off homerun.  That homerun was his second of the series and for the series, he hit .600.  He drove in five runs plus scored six as well.

Congrats, Matt!

Adam Davis, who contributed a solo homerun Saturday, is ready for the tournament.

The shot that launched a Big Ten Championship

The photo of Matt Dittman directly above pretty much says it all.  When we look back at this past weekend, there’s no doubt it will remain one of the most remembered moments of Illinois Baseball history.  As Dittman hit the walk-off homerun to clinch a half-share of the Big Ten Championship on Sunday, that concluded the second game in the series that the Illini won on a walk off homerun.  The other they won in the eighth inning.  The fans got their money’s worth this weekend, that’s for sure.

The resulting fracas after Ditt’s homer on Saturday

Dittman wasn’t alone in his heroics this weekend, though.  That’s usually the case with the Illinois baseball team .  Justin Parr drove in five runs on Friday and Davis Hendrickson brought in the winning runs in the eighth that day.

McMurray’s homer on Sunday (Kimes, are you wearing you uni backwards?)

And Casey McMurray, the everyday left fielder who came into this weekend with nary a homer to his name this season, not only hit a walk-off homerun to win it on Thursday but contributed with another Saturday.  Timing is everything in baseball, they say.

Ironically, the Illini hit five homers this weekend but none in their 13-12 win on Friday.

Wes Braun (above) came in and pitched a perfect two innings for the win on Saturday.  A word about Wes, he had only given up ONE earned run this whole regular season as the team’s closer.  He sports a nifty 0.49 ERA.

Anyway, words cannot express, as they say.  I can vaguely remember the 2005 Big Ten Championship season.  That was when I was beginning to go to games and get interested in the program (certainly not at the level I am now).  I do remember the Big Ten Tournament since it was held at Illinois Field.

That was then and this is now.  The players and coaches are preparing for the tournament.  Fortunately, they have an extra day to prepare because of the bye (I’ve been to three tournaments and know how important that bye is).  Their first game will be on Thursday at 7pm.  Probable starter is Kevin Johnson.

Here are the tournament brackets if you haven’t seen them yet and here are the final standings.

Plenty of more photos are here.

Congratulations Illinois!!

Casey McMurray hits a solo shot in the bottom of ninth to win the game…

… and was warmly greeted at the plate by all his teammates.

Casey McMurray’s timing was impeccable tonight.  With one out in the bottom of the ninth and the score tied, he chose that moment to hit his first homerun of the year.  That blast over the left field wall gave Illinois a 4-3 win over Indiana in the first of a three game series.

Kevin Johnson (above) pitched like a winner tonight allowing only two earned runs in 8 2/3 innings.  Unfortunately, he didn’t get the elusive ‘W’.  After a hit-by-pitch and later, a walk in the 9th, Coach Hartleb brought in freshman Luke Joyce to get the last out, giving Joyce the win.  Knowing Johnson though, he’s just as happy with Illinois winning the game.

It was a low scoring game but the fans did get to see some longball.  Four homers were hit in tonight’s game, three by the Illini.  Matt Dittman hit a long shot that landed over the right centerfield wall in the second inning.  Later, in the sixth, Brandon Hohl hit a solo homerun.

Matt Dittman rounds third on his homer during the second inning…

…and Brandon Hohl follows suit in the sixth.

Actually, all the homers were solo efforts.  No team scored more than one run in an inning.  The largest lead was Indiana’s two run balance in the 4th.  Yes,it was a very tight game.

More photos from today here.

Random Ramblings

I’d like to wish Ron S a speedy recovery from surgery.  Many of you who attend Illinois games recognize Ron and his trademark cheering at the games.  He has definitely been missed.  Rumor has it that he will try to make it to a game this weekend.  That’s great news!

Next up:

Same time,  same team tomorrow.  We play Indiana Friday night at 6:05pm at Illinois Field.

Go Illinois!!

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