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Published May 27, 2019
Illini baseball selected to NCAA Tournament
Erich Fisher  •  OrangeandBlueNews
Staff Writer

Urbana - Illinois baseball coach Dan Hartleb and his team walked into Billy Barooz Pub and Grill last year expecting to have their season still alive.

Players and coaches gathered in a corner, cracked jokes, shared laughs and then waited. And they waited. And they kept waiting.

They were waiting to see “Illinois” get placed in a bracket during the NCAA Tournament Selection Show. Their initial patience slowly grew into a realization. The Illini’s high aspirations at the start of the show turned into disappointment and disbelief at its conclusion.

Hartleb walked out of the pub knowing he couldn’t watch anymore college baseball that year.

“It leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you don’t make the tournament,” Hartleb said. “My son watches every game in the NCAA Tournament and the College World Series and when we’re not in it, I can’t watch it. It absolutely tears me up.”


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No player left that day with any resemblance of a smile. The atmosphere and tone of the watch party drastically dropped as a word was hardly spoken when each player made their eventual exits.

The only player to actually put together a sentence was outfielder Jack Yalowitz, who bravely stood up and faced media members asking the simple question “what went wrong?”

“It was tough,” Yalowitz said. “That feeling of not getting in was really tough on us.”

The players didn’t wallow in self pity, though. They knew they had no one else to blame but themselves. They, instead, used their failure as any person who’s fallen short in life should: as motivation.

A different type of focus and mindset reigned over the 2019 roster with now knowing they needed to file a better resume to the selection committee if they ever wanted to reach the tournament, somewhere no one on the team has any experience at.

Hartleb used the club’s lack of postseason experience also as motivation.

“It’s one thing I’ve talked to them from the start. We needed to build a resume,” Hartleb said. “I challenged this group. I told them this is a group that’s never been to the NCAA Tournament. I tell them every year it’s an expectation of mine but it doesn’t matter what my expectation is.

“I basically threw it in their face all year.”

The talent necessary to reach their goal was clearly there. Infielder Michael Massey realized that two games into the season when the Illini upset a ranked Wake Forest team on the road.But the team’s mentality was different because of what they experienced in that pub last year.

“That’s never a good feeling as an athlete or in life in general to come up that short… It helped us and it kind of fueled us; kept our focus better especially on those mid-week games and on the back end of series,” Massey said. “(It changed) our focus and our desire to finish teams. Last year we would be up 2-0 in a series and we wouldn’t come out and play as focused as we should on a Sunday because we already knew we had the series. This year we treated every game individually. We realized from last year how important each game is and I don’t think we had any lapses.”

And there were hardly any lapses for an Illinois team that finished with a 36-19 overall record, a 15-9 conference record and a No. 28 standing in the RPI (the best in the Big Ten).

Yalowitz wanted there to be “no doubt” for the committee this year.

“It was kind of a long year to kind of get that revenge and leave no doubt,” Yalowitz said. “That was something we talked about a lot was leave no doubt to the committee. Let’s be a team that’s a lock to get into the tournament and let’s be a team that could potentially host and you know if we had a better run in Omaha we could’ve hosted here in Champaign.

“That was the mentality of the team is to leave no doubt on the field so the committee doesn’t leave us out again.”

Even though all the projections had the Illini in as a No. 2 seed, Massey still “was on edge” as the team came together at the Urbana Country Club on Monday, May 27, to watch this year’s selection show. He had to see it to believe it.

So when himself and his teammates saw the long-awaited announcement that their season was still alive, they couldn’t help but jump out of their seats in excitement.

Illinois now heads to Oxford, Mississippi where its first game in the NCAA Regionals will be against Clemson on Friday, May 31. The Illini share the bracket with No. 12 seeded Ole Miss, Jacksonville State and Clemson.

For Massey, he’s ready to live a dream.

“Have a chance to go to that road in Omaha like every kid dreams and to be able to extend this season with these great teammates and have another opportunity to bond and take a bus trip,” Massey said. “I’m really excited.”

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