Maryland’s baseball team marched into Indiana with one goal in mind: topple the team at the conference’s summit. The Terps used the opportunity to turn in three statement wins to seal their first sweep of the season, and now stand alone at the top of the Big Ten.
A 14-8 win on Sunday marked a third-straight decisive victory for Maryland, as its offense proved relentless in the first back-and-forth game of the weekend. The Terps scored in eight straight innings, powered by Eddie Hacopian and Elijah Lambros, who muscled out seven combined hits, and Matt Shaw, who homered in all three games in increasingly impactful moments.
Savacool was iffy over a rare Sunday start as he gave up two different multi-RBI home runs to Indiana’s Devin Taylor, but even two separate rain delays couldn’t stop the responsive Maryland offense. The Terps are hitting their stride at a convenient time, and will receive more notoriety for playoff talks after dethroning the then conference-leading Hoosiers.
“Good win, proud of the guys,” Maryland Coach Rob Vaughn said. “We’ve set [the sweep] up three times this year, and this is the first time we’ve finished the weekend. Thought this was a really relentless approach.”
The Terps cleaned up this weekend in the two games to set up the sweep, toppling Indiana 13-2 and 16-2 on Friday and Saturday. The Hoosiers, who entered the weekend leading the Big Ten, saw the title usurped after Maryland took a full game lead over the conference.
Savacool, who saw Nick Dean fill in for his usual Friday night slot, made his first Sunday appearance of the year in the closeout game. He was rewarded with the breather due to his throwing at least 100 pitches in each of his last four starts,
Maryland failed to crack the scoreboard in the first inning for the first time all series, but its small-ball strategy paid dividends with a three-hit second inning putting the Terps up 2-0. Reigning Big Ten Player of the Week Hacopian started the run with a stand-up double, pushing his hit streak to 12 games before Matt Woods and Jacob Orr each collected an RBI.
Three more hits in the third inning pushed the lead to 4-0, but the Hoosiers offense finally emerged in the bottom of that frame when Devin Taylor unleashed a 479-foot three-run jack to cut the lead to one. Maryland answered right back with a Nick Lorusso RBI to bring home Kevin Keister, and Savacool tossed a two-strikeout fourth inning to hold the score at 5-3.
Lambros added a sixth run with a solo homer, but the Indiana bats exploded again in the fifth to stun Savacool. Another flyout resulted in another RBI, and Taylor once again stepped up to the plate with a man on. He sent another 400+ foot blast well over the wall to tie the game at six runs apiece before another hit rally gave Indiana a 7-6 lead.
“The bottom of the lineup is really getting going,” Vaughn said. “When that happens, this lineup gets really scary. It lengthens your lineup, that’s what allowed us to be really, really consistent with it.”
Shaw stepped up with a solo homer to knot the game at 7-7 in the sixth, giving him full control of the Big Ten home run leaderboard. A 53 minute rain delay soon halted the game after lightning was spotted, and Kenny Lippman took Savacool’s spot on the mound when play resumed. He struck out the side, and Maryland wasted no time placing two runners in scoring position. Another rain delay came and went, and Luke Shliger’s single cleared the bags to take a 9-7 lead to wrap up the hour-long inning.
After David Falco Jr. silenced the Hoosiers to enter the eighth, the Terps used the opportunity to continue building on their lead. A steady stream of singles enabled the visitors to add two more runs, and they continued burying Indiana in the ninth with a Woods bunt RBI and a Lambros two-run moonshot. His driving in Maryland’s 13th and 14th run set the final score at 14-8, enough to seal the weekend series on the back of a +31 run differential over three games.
“It puts the future in our hands, which you like as a coach,” Vaughn said. “But there’s a lot of baseball left to be played. Great weekend for us, but we got three big weeks coming up that we gotta finish.”
The Terps will get the chance to set their win streak at eight on Tuesday, when they’ll return home to host Mount St. Mary’s.
