Iowa Hawkeyes: Tournament hopes loom large for baseball team

The Iowa Hawkeyes baseball team is on the cusp of a tournament birth. An upcoming series vs #19 UC Irvine plays a key role in fulfilling those aspirations.

Winners of their last five Big Ten series, the Iowa Hawkeyes baseball team will go out of the conference and face a good UC Irvine Anteaters team this weekend in what could be instrumental for Iowa’s tournament hopes.

UC Irvine comes in with a record of 28-10 and ranked 25th in the country. The Iowa Hawkeyes baseball team is having a pretty solid season itself sitting 4th in the big ten just a game back of the Nebraska Cornhuskers for 3rd.

They are sitting in a perfect position to make the conference tournament, but they sit just outside the big dance of college baseball.

Coach Rick Heller and his team have had some pretty solid wins this seasons; series wins to be exact.

Early in the season they went on the road in Stillwater, Oklahoma and beat a previously ranked Oklahoma State Cowboys team. To this date that is their biggest non-conference series win of the season. Later in the season, the Iowa Hawkeyes got a huge conference series sweep at home vs. Illinois on March 29-31st. That was a big one for the Hawks because they were just coming off getting swept at Indiana the series before.

Since that time, they have rallied as a group and have been playing good baseball since, getting series wins over Rutgers, Purdue, Nebraska, and the latest at Ohio State.

Interestingly enough, this spark has been led by some of the newcomers on the team: first baseman Zeb Adreon and infielder Brendan Sher. Adreon was Big Ten Player of the Week when he batted .565 and Sher was the Big Ten Freshman of the Week after hitting .400. Look for them to be a key component in this upcoming series.

This coming weekend at home, where Iowa is 15-4 playing on their home turf, is a big one vs. the Anteaters of UC Irvine. With the possibility of finishing the Big Ten season on a high note and a deep run in the conference tournament, it would help the teams chances of making the big dance. Taking 2 out of 3, or maybe even sweeping the Anteaters, is the first step in helping the Iowa Hawkeyes solidify a spot in the NCAA tournament.