Columbus Dispatch: Big Ten baseball tourney: Watkins' Arnett shines for Indiana

Thursday, May 21, 2009 4:07 AM
By Ken Gordon

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Every time Eric Arnett let loose with a pitch yesterday in Huntington Park, a forest of radar guns sprouted behind home plate. Down went the arm, up went the guns.

That's life right now for the Indiana right-hander, a Watkins Memorial graduate and the ace of the Hoosiers' staff.

He pitched seven innings of four-hit shutout ball yesterday, and Indiana trounced Purdue 9-1 in an opening-round game of the Big Ten tournament.

Third-seeded Indiana will play No. 2 Minnesota today. Top seed Ohio State will meet No. 4 Illinois, which pounded out 18 hits in a 16-5 win over Michigan State.

The focus, though, was on Arnett. The 6-foot-5, 225-pounder was lifted after 94 pitches, at which point the sea of major-league scouts scattered.

The win raised his record to 12-1 and lowered his ERA to 2.58. He struck out 10 and walked one.

Arnett was still throwing in the low 90-mph range in his final inning.

"If you look back on how this season started, he wasn't on the radar screen of a lot of people," Indiana coach Tracy Smith said. "And as the season has progressed and he has matured as a pitcher and his velocity has crept up there, it's been interesting, because every weekend, it's like a showcase.

"I give him a lot of credit for how he has handled it."

Smith said he thought Arnett's experience playing basketball for the Hoosiers last winter helped him mature. First-year coach Tom Crean, inheriting a depleted squad because of NCAA violations, asked Arnett and fellow baseball player Kipp Schutz to walk on.

Arnett was in uniform for games but did not play. Still, Smith believes he benefited.

"Being in that environment when you're swarmed and there's 17,000 people looking over you and things like that, 30 or 40 scouts probably isn't that big a deal," Smith said. "So I really think mentality-wise, that helped him tremendously."

Arnett, a junior, did admit to some jitters pitching in front of a large group of friends and family.

"It was a blast," he said. "You kind of get extra nervous out there because you're back in front of everyone you know again. But it was good to be able to come back home and pitch in front of people you haven't seen in a while."

Illinois overcame an early 4-0 deficit after Michigan State's Eric Roof hit a grand slam -- the first in Huntington Park's short history.

The Illini scored five runs in the fourth inning and seven in the sixth to make it a runaway.

Ohio State took two of three from Illinois in Champaign two weeks ago, but the Illini are a confident-looking group.

"Ohio State is a very good team," Illinois coach Dan Hartleb said. "But I think our team believes they are as good as anybody here."