Weekend Junkdrawer

Here is a hodge-podge of Big Ten baseball items for you to mull over while filling out your brackets.

* Matt Bashore of Indiana and Michigan's Nate Recknagel were named the conference's pitcher and player of the week, respectively.

* He didn't claim the award, but Iowa's Caleb Curry had quite a weekend, as well. The Hawkeyes' CF went 8 for 13, scored three times, drove in seven, doubled, walked twice, stole five bases and had a sac fly.

* Another Hawkeye, DH Trevor Willis had my favorite stat line of the weekend:

Player AB R H RBI BB SO PO A LOB
Willis, Trevor dh... 1 4 0 0 3 1 0 0 0

Willis scored four runs without ever getting a hit. He walked three times and was hit by a pitch in the Hawkeyes' slugfest with Rutgers on Sunday. Iowa prevailed, 16-14. In his lone official AB, Willis K'd.

* Ohio State freshmen Dan Burkhardt and Ryan Meade each had a four hit game over the weekend.

* I'm still not sure what's going on in Happy Valley, but heading into Sunday the Lions were eighth in batting average, tenth in ERA and ninth in fielding percentage. Ouch. I tend to agree with Uncle Lar over at Happy Valley Hardball who suggested that PSU may have already played themselves out of an at-large bid this year.

* Last I checked, which was a couple of minutes ago, only four Big Ten players had an OPS over 1.000. (You thought I forgot, didn't you?) Based on a completely arbitrary 30 at bat minimum, Northwestern's Mike Kalina was at a ridiculous 1.390. Nate Recknagel of Michigan was second at 1.305. Yes, that's crazy, too. Iowa's Caleb Curry was in at 1.208 and fourth was Indiana's Josh Phegley at 1.119.

That's all for now. I'm off to watch Top Gear on BBC America.