Omaha – The Gophers stayed alive in the Big Ten baseball tournament by beating Indiana 9-4 Thursday in an elimination game.
The No. 21-ranked Hoosiers (36-21) were the top seed after winning the regular-season conference title. Indiana took a 3-2 lead Thursday by scoring three runs in the bottom of the fourth inning.
But Minnesota (27-26) took the lead right back with three runs in the top of the fifth. Jordan Kozicky doubled to drive in the tying run, and he scored on Eli Wilson's single up the middle. Cole McDevitt followed with another RBI double.
The Gophers added single runs in the sixth on Zack Raabe's groundout and in the seventh on Wilson's homer, and two runs in the ninth on Riley Smith's triple — the team's ninth extra-base hit out of 13 total.
"I just had to grind through it," said Gophers reliever Nick Lackney, who held Indiana to one unearned run and one hit in six innings after taking over for starter Sam Thoresen.
"[You need] a short memory, keep going," said Lackney in his postgame interview on the Big Ten Network. "We were a lot looser today."
Coach John Anderson's bullpen has given up only one unearned run in 12⅓ innings in two tournament games.
Next Minnesota, which needs to repeat as the tournament champion to make the NCAA field, will play the loser of the Iowa-Nebraska game at 7:30 p.m. Friday. Iowa and Nebraska were scheduled to play Thursday night, but that game was pushed back to Friday because of rain.
