Iowa baseball: Team must win out in B1G tournament

The Iowa baseball team put itself in a big hole by losing its final five regular season games. Now they must win out to make the NCAA tournament.

Five. That is what the Iowa baseball team’s losing streak is currently at.  The season went downhill in a hurry after dropping two-of-three to a bad Michigan State team last week at home. And most recently, they got swept by Maryland in a three-game series.

Prior to this streak, the Hawkeyes were fourth in the Big Ten standings with the potential to move up facing what was supposed to be an easy three-game series against the Spartans. However, they played down to their competition and the free fall continued to the end of the regular season.

They are in a three-way tie for sixth place and are percentage points ahead of Ohio State and Maryland. Unfortunately, the tiebreakers do not favor Iowa, hence them being the eighth seed. Originally projected to be a number three seed in the NCAA Regionals, now the Hawkeyes are on the outside looking in with a record of 30-22.

To add insult to injury, they barely made the Big Ten Tournament and will have to face number one seed Indiana on Wednesday. Indiana swept the Hawkeyes in a three-game series back in late March including a 13-1 and 7-1 defeat in the middle and final game of that series, respectively.

There’s no doubt that the team has an uphill battle to climb from here on out. If they can somehow find a way to beat Indiana, they will face the winner between number 4 Minnesota and number 5 Nebraska on Thursday.

A season that was once filled with hope marked with head coach Rick Heller’s sixth straight 30+ season has now come down to a monumental task of beating the Big Ten regular season champions.

The Hawkeyes figure to be facing Hoosiers’ Tanner Gordon on Wednesday who went 6-4 with a 3.35 ERA in 80.2 innings pitched this season. He had 86 strikeouts compared to just 17 walks to go along with an opponent batting average of just 0.207. Gordon last pitched on Thursday against Rutgers and tossed 7.0 innings while striking out six batters and only allowing two runs.

Iowa will need to catch fire and in a hurry because time is running out on the Hawkeyes season. The winner of the Big Ten Tournament automatically qualifies for the NCAA Regionals.