Illinois first baseman David Kerian (Kendall Rogers)

Dispatches From Champaign, May 29

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — For about half an hour, it looked like Ohio was going to hang with Illinois, fitting in with the nationwide trend of four-seeds at least scaring their regional hosts. Kevin Duchene didn’t have his best command, and the Bobcat hitters seemed to have the measure of Illinois’ lefty ace — the lefties laying off the chase slider off the outside corner, making him get more of the plate than he was used to. And sometimes it worked — in the top of the second, Duchene ran an 0-1 slider right into John Adryan’s power zone and the Bobcat third[…]