Gophers game with Wildcats postponed until Friday morning

The Gophers baseball team's second game in the Big Ten tournament with Northwestern scheduled for Thursday night in Bloomington, Ind., was postponed a day. They will play at 9 a.m. Friday,

Minnesota, seeded third, was supposed to play the seventh-seeded Wildcats at 7:30 p.m., but Day 2's schedule was disrupted early because the first of four scheduled games — won by Indiana over Michigan in 13 innings — lasted almost 4½ hours.

The second game of the day, won by Iowa, ended in nine innings but there were 17 runs scored and 27 hits, so it took almost 3½ hours, further pushing Thursday's schedule back.

The third game, between Maryland and Purdue, started about 6:30 p.m. — 2½ hours behind schedule.

That meant it had to finish by 8:20, which would be followed by a mandatory 40-minute break — for the Gophers' game to begin by 9 p.m., the curfew set by tournament officials for the first pitch of the last game.

The Gophers opened the Big Ten tournament with a 5-4 win over the Hoosiers on Wednesday.

The Wildcats, who have not played Minnesota this season, upset second-seeded Michigan 6-4 in their first game.

Indiana 5, Michigan 4 (13): The Hoosiers edged the second-seeded Wolverines in the losers' bracket. Senior outfielder Alex Krupa's RBI single in the 13th ended the longest game in tournament history — 4 hours, 28 minutes — and eliminated No. 16-ranked Michigan.

The Hoosiers (33-21-2) scored two runs in the bottom of the eight to take a 4-3 lead. The first run came home on a groundout, the second on Logan Sowers' single. Michigan (42-15) tied the score on Drew Lugbauer's two-out RBI single in the ninth.

Craig Dedelow had a two-run homer for Indiana in the seventh to tie the score at 2-all.

Cal Krueger, the fifth pitcher for sixth-seeded Indiana, got the victory with three scoreless innings. He gave up two hits, struck out four and walked one.

Michigan used eight pitchers; Jaskie Oliver threw the first seven innings, giving up two runs on four hits. He struck out nine and walked one.

The win gave Indiana coach Chris Lemonis his 100th victory at the school.

Iowa 9, Maryland 8: Matt Hoeg's sacrifice fly in the top of the ninth inning broke an 8-all as the Hawkeyes (35-19) edged the Terrapins in a first-round game postponed from Wednesday.

Chris Whelan, Robert Neustrom and Tyler Cropley all hit solo homers for Iowa, which took a 4-0 lead in the second. Nick Dunn had a three-run homer for Maryland (34-20), which also hit two solo shots.

"I am proud of our guys, it was a hard-fought game," Iowa coach Rick Heller said. "We had some guys step up big. Chris had a big game and Matt drove in a few runs. We had a lot of good at-bats up-and-down the lineup and found a way to get it done."

Senior Josh Martsching got the win with 1⅔ scoreless innings in relief.