POWER SURGE: Michigan State's 8 HRs Most In D-I Game In 2017
ERIC OLSON, AP Sports Writer
Jake Boss Jr. knew his team had power, but what Michigan State did against Illinois bordered on the ridiculous.
The Spartans' first five hits Sunday were home runs — all in the first two innings — and they finished with eight in their 17-6 victory in Champaign, Illinois.
Brandon Hughes homered three times and Marty Bechina twice. Dan Durkin, Alex Troop and Dan Chmielewski each went deep once on a 62-degree afternoon when the wind was blowing straight out at 15 mph.
The Spartans finished the three-game sweep with 13 homers at Illinois Field, where the dimensions are 330 feet down the lines, 370 to the alleys and 400 to center.
"We got a lot of barrels to balls," Boss said Monday. "There were probably a couple home runs that were wind-aided. The majority of them, honestly, were legitimate home runs."
The eight home runs Sunday were the most in a Division I game this season. Illinois starter Luke Shilling gave up six of them in his four innings. Of the Spartans' 13 hits, 11 were for extra bases.
The Spartans have hit a Big Ten-leading 28 homers in 20 games, two more than they hit in 56 games last season. Bechina leads the team with six, and Hughes, Durkin and Zack McGuire have four apiece.
Michigan State (15-5, 3-0 Big Ten) leads the conference with 8.6 runs per game and a .306 batting average. At No. 24, the Spartans are the Big Ten's top RPI team, with three of their five losses to top-10s Clemson and South Carolina.
Rival Michigan, Maryland, Indiana and Nebraska were the Big Ten teams that received most of the attention coming into the season. The Spartans, now in a three-way tie for first with Minnesota and Indiana, were mostly an afterthought.
"It's fine," Boss said. "For us, really, we try not to pay a lot of attention to that. Any time somebody in our conference gets recognition, I think it's good for our league. Our league has been very good the last couple year and we're starting to get more of the recognition we thought we were worthy of a while back but not getting it.
"The rivalry stuff (with Michigan), that's probably more for fans than anything else. I guess when you get written about at the end of the year that's when it matters, I guess."
A look around the country:
ANOTHER BEAVERS SWEEP
Oregon State, the consensus No. 1 team in this week's polls, ran its winning streak to 15 games with a home weekend sweep of Arizona.
The Beavers won the first two games 4-3 and 5-4 on ninth-inning walk-offs, with KJ Harrison singling in the deciding run on Friday and Preston Jones scoring from second on a wild pitch on Saturday. They won 11-7 Sunday.
Their 20-1 record is the program's best through 21 games since 1962.
HOGGING THE GLORY
Missouri (21-3, 4-2 SEC), which went into the weekend with a nation-leading 20-game win streak, lost two of three at home to Arkansas.
The Razorbacks (20-5, 5-1) hit three home runs in the series-clinching 9-8 win and lead the Southeastern Conference with 36. Grant Koch has eight homers and Carson Shaddy and Dominic Fletcher have six apiece.
STRUGGLING A&M
Texas A&M (16-9) ended a five-game SEC losing streak when it beat Vanderbilt 6-4 on Sunday, but the Aggies' 1-5 start in conference play is its worst since it opened 0-6 in the Southwest Conference in 1994. A trip to LSU looms this weekend.
HOMERS IN BUNCHES
Butler junior outfielder Tyler Houston hit five of his six home runs this season in a three-game sweep of Ohio. He went deep three times in a 5-4 win Sunday. Houston hit just one homer last season.
PERFECT GAME
Cory Abbott's perfect game for Loyola Marymount against BYU on Saturday was the 26th in Division I since 1957, according to the NCAA, and the first since Wright State's Jesse Scholtens was perfect against Dayton on March 11, 2016.
Abbott, a junior right-hander, struck out a career-high 13 and threw 106 pitches in the 2-0 victory. He went into the game with a 4.30 ERA with 22 strikeouts against 13 walks.
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