No. 8 seed Penn State jumped out to an early lead over No. 1 seed Illinois in the Big Ten baseball tournament on Wednesday, but Nittany Lions head coach Mike Gambino wasn’t quite content with the margin.
Speaking with the Big Ten Network broadcast during the 5th inning, Gambino’s team held a 3-1 lead. But at various points, Gambino felt his team had a few more runs to be scored that got left on the table. He shared that if his Penn State squad could come up with a few more clutch hits and limit the Illinois offense, an upset could be a cruise.
“I’m happy with the bats, I’m happy with them. I’d like to get one more hit or two these next couple of innings, we feel like we could pull away,” Gambino said with Penn State holding a 3-0 lead.
Illinois would finally plate a run in the bottom of the 5th inning, with Penn State responding via a two-run home run in the top of the 6th inning. Illinois then added another run to make it 5-2 as the squads headed to the 7th inning.
Gambino also made sure to give some credit to assistant coach Scott Loiseau for managing some of the offensive load for the coaching staff.
“Scotty’s done a great job with our hit plan all year,” Gambino said. “Like you said, against Maryland the bats came alive. But they’ve been like that all year. And you look at today right, we’ve got guys on 1st, guys on 2nd, just got this feel that we’re one hit away from really, really going.”
On the hill for Penn State was starting pitcher Travis Luensmann, who worked a complete five innings on 91 pitches, allowing just the one run, before sitting down.
Gambino said it would be a joint decision on when to finally shut him down as Luensmann earned the privilege to dictate, somewhat, when he might exit the game on Wednesday.
“Tell you what, man, he’s earned the right, at this point, to tell me when he’s done,” Gambino said during what would Luensmann’s final inning. “Both with what he’s done this year and how he’s thrown the ball today. And that was kind of our goal coming in: Let’s decide together when we’ve gotta go to the pen. He’s throwing the ball great, so we’re to ride it a little bit and see.”
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