After Being on the Bubble, Indiana Baseball Squeaks Into NCAA Tournament

Indiana’s NCAA Tournament chances were so uncertain after the Big Ten Tournament that coach Jeff Mercer treated it like the end of the season. But the Hoosiers were rewarded for their full body of work.

Indiana pitcher Ty Bothwell celebrates during the Big Ten Tournament. / Indiana Athletics

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Indiana baseball’s 10-4 loss to Nebraska in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals put head coach Jeff Mercer in an unfamiliar position.

He didn’t know if the season was over or not. Just in case, he treated it like the end and hoped he was wrong.

That hope was rewarded Monday, when the Hoosiers learned they made the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year. They will play Friday in the four-team regional in Knoxville, Tenn.  

Didn't take long to see our name 😎 pic.twitter.com/OmqpyR5Zt9

— Indiana Baseball (@IndianaBase) May 27, 2024

After being eliminated from the conference tournament, Indiana was squarely on the NCAA Tournament bubble, and projections had the Hoosiers either among the last four teams in or first four out. During his previous coaching stint at Wright State, Mercer knew his teams needed to win their conference tournament to make the NCAA Tournament. And across his first five seasons at Indiana, Mercer’s teams, including those that made the tournament in 2019 and 2023, had never been on the bubble.

So when it was time to deliver a message to his team following Saturday’s loss, Mercer is still unsure whether he handled it correctly. He called it a peculiar feeling, one he hasn’t felt before.

“Honestly, I treated it like it was the end of our season,” Mercer said Monday. “I don’t know if that’s the right thing or the wrong thing to do, but it was what I felt in the moment.”

He thanked outgoing seniors like Ty Bothwell, Ty Rybarcyzk and Morgan Colopy for their dedication to the program. He thanked players who have decided to pursue professional careers following the season. Mercer knew the Hoosiers’ postseason chances were out of his hands after Saturday’s two losses to Nebraska, and all they could do was wait until Monday’s selection show.

“I think in our society we don’t say thank you enough,” Mercer said. “I don’t think we appreciate people in the moment, look a guy in the face and say thank you for what you’ve done and how much you cared and how much you gave. So if that was going to be our last time together, I wanted to make sure that people got what they had coming, got what they had due, were appreciated and celebrated, and then we talked about I don’t know what’s going to happen.” 

“I told them the truth. I didn’t know. And I thought it would be close. We had some great wins, and then we had some bad losses, and I told them that. So if those bad losses were going to outweigh it, then so be it. And we kind of made our bed and we had to lie in it. So that’s about how the conversation went, told the guys I loved them because I do, gave them hugs, and if that was going to be it, make sure that nothing was left unsaid.”

Mercer had been feeling this uncertainty for weeks leading up to the Big Ten Tournament. He figured if Indiana won its series at Nebraska, it could secure an at-large bid. But the Hoosiers lost two of three. Mercer felt the same about a potential series sweep over Michigan the following weekend. But they fell one game short. 

Indiana won its first two Big Ten Tournament games to reach the semifinals against Nebraska, and Mercer thought one more win and an appearance in the Big Ten Tournament title game would “nail it down.” But again, a 10-4 loss Saturday night put the Hoosiers one step short of really feeling secure in its postseason future.

“We had a feeling we were on the bubble there,” Indiana first baseman Brock Tibbitts said. “And we knew that a win over Nebraska would kind of solidify our spot, and we weren’t able to get the job done. So after the game, it was really just uncertainty about what the future held, not knowing if that would be the last time you got to take the field with those guys or if we’d get a shot this weekend.”

“After the game Saturday where we lost and got eliminated, I didn’t feel great,” Mercer said. “Until I kind of stepped back and looked at more of the metrics and numbers.”

Indiana is No. 55 nationally in the RPI, a ranking system that’s taken into consideration when building the 64-team tournament field. But with 30 automatic qualifiers from conference tournaments, seeding isn’t as simple as inviting the top 64 teams in the RPI.

Indiana benefited from only two teams in the country “bid stealing,” meaning they won their conference tournament and received an automatic bid when they weren’t in contention for an at-large bid. As conference tournaments played out, there easily could have been four or five bid stealers.

And as Mercer further evaluated Indiana’s resume, he felt encouraged by a few key factors. Indiana played six conference tournament champions – Duke, Nebraska, Northern Kentucky, Dallas Baptist, Evansville and Arizona – and it had a 6-10 record against Quad 1 opponents. Only 34 teams nationwide played more Quad 1 games, and some weren’t in contention for a bid. The Big Ten also ranked fourth in conference RPI, and Indiana finished third in the regular season standings and made the conference tournament semifinals.

“By the end of [Sunday], I thought we had a real chance to be in, just the way the whole thing had kind of navigated,” Mercer said. “So I felt halfway decent [Monday] morning. I don’t think you ever feel really good until you see your name pop up, but over the course of that 48 hours I went from not feeling very good to feeling, kind of by this morning, much more confident.”

The NCAA announced the 64-team tournament field Monday at noon. And after waiting anxiously from Saturday night through Monday morning, the Hoosiers didn’t have to wait long when the selection show started.

Tennessee was announced first as the No. 1 overall seed, and Indiana quickly followed as the regional’s No. 3 seed, setting up a matchup against No. 2 seed Southern Miss on Friday at 1 p.m. ET. Northern Kentucky, which Indiana defeated 11-5 on March 6 in Bloomington, is the regional’s No. 4 seed. 

Indiana was ready to close the book on the 2024 season after losing to Nebraska, but Monday’s news has given the Hoosiers new life and a second consecutive NCAA Tournament bid as one of the last four teams in.

For Mercer, this year carries some extra meaning. Different from his first few years at Indiana, he has seen full-career development from many of his players, and ending their career with a tournament appearance is special.

His six years coaching Indiana span the entire college careers of guys like sixth-year senior Ty Bothwell, who will likely start on the mound for the Hoosiers this weekend, and Morgan Colopy, who’s been with the program since 2020. Mercer’s impactful 2021 recruiting class, with starters like Tibbitts, Carter Mathison, Josh Pyne and Luke Sinnard, will have professional decisions to make after the season. 

With those players and others, Mercer said after the Big Ten Tournament that this team could win a regional and that it's the most prepared team that he’s ever coached to do it. 

Indiana has two starting pitchers, Bothwell and Connor Foley, that can go deep into games, an improvement from last year’s tournament team. Mercer said the bullpen has pitched especially well the last six weeks and has swing-and-miss stuff. And when it follows the game plan, he feels Indiana can be one of the better offenses in the country.

So when the wait was finally over, and the Hoosiers learned Monday they were in, he was happy they’ll get a chance to prove they are ready to meet the challenge.

“You feel relief,” Mercer said. “And you feel a sense of joy for those guys. You feel a sense of accomplishment for them.”