TGIF

It's the weekend. Finally. For some national perspective, Will Kimmey provides his weekend preview here. From a Big Ten angle, let's see who is on the schedule.

Minnesota: Rutgers
Indiana: Vermont, Kent State
Purdue: Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
Ohio State: Northern Iowa, Bucknell, Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Iowa: Illinois-Chicago
Michigan State: Bradley
Northwestern: St. Francis, Cornell
Penn State: Delaware
#22 Michigan: Ohio
Illinois: Miami (Ohio)

You may note a number of schools that have made some big news in the Big Dance are on the slate. Vermont, Bucknell and Wisconsin-Milwaukee all posted opening round upsets in the hoops tourney. I can only hope that their baseball teams are quite as successful.

As I didn't get around to posting this information until Saturday morning, a quick recap of Friday's action is in order.

Rutgers 13 Minnesota 2 (Box)
Matt Fornasiere led the Gophers with a hit, run and RBI. Steve Hook drove in three for the Scarlet Knights.

Vermont 5 Indiana 3 (Box)
The Catamounts managed to slow down the IU bats. Corby Heckman pushed across two Hoosier runs. Raymond Montanez hit walk-off homer to win it for Vermont.

Texas A &M-Corpus Christi 9 Purdue 2 (Box)
Mitch Hilligoss and John Hunter had four of the Boilers' six hits. Josh Mitchell pitched a complete game of TAMUCC.

Ohio State 11 Northern Iowa 3 (Box)
Paul Farinacci collected four RBI and Jedidiah Stephen drove home two, scored twice and had two hits. Trent Luyster improved to 3-1. The game marked the return of All-America candidate Steve Caravati. The Buckeye outfielder had two hits and two RBI.

Illinois-Chicago 2 Iowa 1, 10 innings (Box)
Ryan Zink pitched a ten inning complete game for UIC. Zink allowed ten hits, but fanned nine Hawkeyes and walked none. Andy Lytle's three hits paced Iowa's offense.

Caravati's return is the news of the day. I expect OSU, who was a pretty good hitting club anyway, to really start to post some big numbers with Caravati back in the lineup.