Editor’s note: The Daily Illini sports desk sits down Sunday nights and decides which Illinois athlete or coach is our Illini of the Week. Student-athletes and coaches are evaluated by individual performance and contribution to team success.

Thomas Lindauer steps up to the plate, ahead in the count 2-1. It’s arguably the best count a hitter can find himself in.

Lindauer just saw a slider that missed for a ball and is sitting on a fastball. He won’t swing at anything else Houston Baptist pitcher Josh Martinez throws him in the first game of last Saturday’s doubleheader.

Martinez, who just came out of the bullpen, is in for damage control with the Illini leading 7-0, and the wind is blowing out. Lindauer thinks maybe this is his chance.

He feels in complete control in the batter’s box, especially with David Kerian on second after an RBI double that extended the Illini lead. It’s the fifth inning, and Lindauer, Illinois’ shortstop, is hitting sixth in the order, which has been his usual spot this season.

Hitting sixth was a little unusual for him coming into the year. He’d always been a leadoff hitter. It’s his favorite. He’s hit leadoff ever since he started playing baseball, except senior year of high school, when he hit third.

That was also the last time he hit a home run.

***

On opening day at Tennessee Tech, Lindauer got the pitch he wanted in the fourth inning and thought he got all of it. Instead, it hit off the left field wall for an RBI double. He had Reid Roper and Brandon Hohl on second and third, respectively, although Roper failed to score, robbing him of another RBI.

“You’ve got to score; that’s the hardest ball he’s ever going to hit,” head coach Dan Hartleb said, scolding Roper.

But he was also poking fun at his shortstop. Just as his roommates — Ronnie Muck, Drasen Johnson and Rob McDonnell — like to get on Lindauer for his lack of power. He even had someone tweet to him before the season, giving predictions that Lindauer will “bat over .300, 25+ RBI, solid fielding as usual, and may even hit a HR” this year.

The junior is listed at 6-foot-2 and a generous 170 pounds and doesn’t look like someone who even hits many doubles; last season, only 12 of his 56 hits went for extra bases. Lindauer considers himself a defensive player; it’s his favorite part of baseball. He loves his fielding gloves and orders them custom made with orange trimming.

He’s hit home runs before — he had eight his junior year of high school. But never at Illinois.

Lindauer feels like he just missed a home run that day at Tennessee Tech, and he doesn’t want to miss it again should he get another chance.

***

Lindauer knows the feeling of doing something that wouldn’t be expected by just looking at him.

He played basketball at Moline High School, and was pretty good too.

During Lindauer’s junior year in 2009, Moline was up big — somewhere around 30 points, he recalls — in its first game against Alleman High School. So Lindauer took his chance and the 6-foot-1 guard took flight for a dunk.

The ball hit the back of the rim and sailed about 30 feet in the air.

An ensuing feeling of doubt lasted a full year before he attempted another in-game dunk. He finally dunked the ball for the first time as a senior, and he only did so once in a game.

Lindauer always had the most fun playing basketball. He still plays with his younger brother whenever they’re both home during breaks. His brother is better than him, so Lindauer uses his 2-year advantage in age whenever he can. He lists his favorite thrill in sports as winning the Pekin Holiday Tournament in basketball when he assisted on the game-winning 30-foot shot.

He wanted to come to Illinois to play baseball because he thought he had a better opportunity and chance at a longer career.

But when he got here, he hated it.

***

Baseball is in the offseason at the start of the school year in August, so Lindauer had to adjust to offseason workouts when he arrived as a freshman. That meant getting up at 5:30 a.m. for lifting at 6 a.m. before scrambling home to shower and eat before an 8 a.m. class. Classes lasted until 2 p.m. before he would have to run to practice at 3 p.m. After practice was over at about 6:30, he’d have to log hours for study table, sometimes until 11 p.m.

And then do it all over again. He was miserable. He wanted to go home.

Lindauer wasn’t used to everything being so structured. About 2,100 students are enrolled at Moline High School, and Lindauer grew used to everyone helping him through everything.

He talked to his parents, Derek and Andria, who played baseball and softball in college. They knew he’d go through rough patches but told him to tough it out. They’re the ones who taught him baseball and didn’t want him to quit after his first rough patch. Which is why it was special for him to get that phone call from his dad last Saturday night after the Illini had completed their doubleheader. “I heard somebody hit one out,” Derek said.

But Lindauer started to love Illinois once he got adjusted, though his first season with the Illini didn’t go as well as he’d hoped.

He came to Illinois as a shortstop but changed positions, starting nine games at second base, seven at shortstop and three at third base. He hit just .178 but was named to the Big Ten all-freshman team at shortstop, even though he played more games at second base.

Lindauer was the only Big Ten freshman to play shortstop in 2011, and he knows that. It was bittersweet getting the letter from the Big Ten in the mail because he knew it wasn’t really earned.

He gained about 10 pounds and improved his arm strength, and his average jumped about 100 points to .279 in 2012, while his average currently sits at .333.

Associate head coach Eric Snider praised his hand-eye coordination, which is also one of the things that make him such a strong player defensively. He rarely makes errors and was a large part of why Illinois was one of the best teams in the nation last season at turning double plays.

He’s able to separate what he does on offense and defense with ease because he keeps Snider’s words in the back of his mind.

“I’ll see some guys out in the field playing defense take a fake swing after a bad at-bat, but you’ll never see a guy in the batters box acting like he’s fielding a ground ball after he makes an error,” Snider said.

It makes Lindauer laugh just recalling it.

He spends most of his time at practice usually smiling and having a good time, especially when he’s at shortstop. He’s making jokes while the team stretches and takes batting practice.

Everything for him is just smooth, like the way he seems to glide to ground balls and collect himself before firing the ball to first. He knows how much time he has and doesn’t rush himself. But even when he does make an error or has a bad at-bat, nothing really seems to bother him.

“When you deal with a guy like that every day, you have to get to know him a little bit,” Snider said. “He has that smoothness about him. It seems like it’s lazy, but he has a pretty good idea what he’s trying to do in the batter’s box and defensively.”

***

On Feb. 4, a former Navy Seal named Clint Bruce was invited by the Illini athletic department to speak to student-athletes. They all pack inside the lecture hall in Lincoln Hall for these speakers and a lot of times are uninterested. The athletic staff usually has to walk around and make sure athletes aren’t just playing around on their phones.

But for some reason this one was different. Athletes lined up after to stay and talk to Bruce, and some staff members even caught the athletes taking notes on their phone, which they say is unheard of.

Lindauer sat on the left side of the stage, about three-quarters of the way back, entranced by every word. Two words in particular caught his attention: be elite.

It’s become his own little personal-adopted motto for this season, and he ends most of his tweets about Illinois baseball with the hashtag #BeElite.

It’s what he kept in mind as he crafted his goals for 2013, both personal and team-oriented. He wants to cut down his seven errors from last year to no more than four (he hasn’t made one yet). He wants to keep his average between .310 and .330 (he’s exceeding that at .333). Finally, he wants the Illini to be a No. 1 seed going into the conference tournament and wants to win a regional.

He doesn’t think he’s being overzealous, but “be elite” is etched in the back of his mind. “Elite” is for people considered to be the best.

But he keeps thinking: “Why be average? Why be great? Why not be elite?”

It’s in his head, along with losing two of three against Tennessee Tech to start the season, and not because of that double off the wall or anything that happened in the first game. Lindauer still isn’t over Illinois’ two losses to the Golden Eagles. He knows the Illini were better than them, and he never wants that to happen again. He wants to talk about the losses in the dugout before games with Snider because he doesn’t want to fall back to that point again.

That’s a lot on his mind when he steps back into the batter’s box.

***

When the ball is left high around his belt, Lindauer explodes out of his tall batting stance and brings his hands inside to pull the ball down the left field line.

He barely felt it off the bat, so he knew it was gone, 345 feet over the left-field wall for his first career home run at Illinois.

It barely makes a difference in the score, but it capped off one of the best hitting weekends of his career — 7-for-15 at the plate with a double, five RBIs and the home run.

But the rest of the team couldn’t believe it and couldn’t hold back its excitement, giving him high fives and congratulations in the dugout after.

“I wouldn’t say I was shocked,” Hartleb said after a long laugh.

After the home run, Lindauer made sure to go up to his coach and let him know he had hit a ball harder than that opening game.

No, Lindauer’s not developing into a power hitter, and he doesn’t think that’s how he can best help the Illini. But he knows that if a pitcher makes a mistake, he can make them pay.

Or, as Hartleb said, “It’s got to be a perfect storm.”

Jamal can be reached at [email protected] and @jamalcollier.