The Big Ten Softball Tournament is underway in West Lafayette, Indiana. The tournament is a four-day, single-elimination format where the top 12 Big Ten teams compete for the title. The seeds are determined by their conference records.
The top four seeds in the tournament receive a first-round bye, and the winner receives an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. The top four seeds for the 2025 tournament are Oregon, UCLA, Nebraska, and Ohio State.
In game one of the tournament, the six-seed Iowa Hawkeyes battled the 11-seed Penn State Nittany Lions. The Hawkeyes swept the regular season series 3-0 and outscored the Nittany Lions 15-4. On Wednesday, a different narrative unfolded.
The Hawkeyes sent ace pitcher Jalen Adams (25-6) to the mound to start the tournament off strong. In a rare bad outing for the Hawkeye star pitcher, Adams struggled. She allowed six runs (six earned) on six hits and only struck out two.
Penn State jumped on Adams early, plating two runs with a home run in the top of the second to take a 2-0 lead. They added another run in the top of the third inning. Devin Simon got the Hawkeyes on the board in the bottom of the fourth inning with a run-scoring double, and cut the deficit to 3-1.
Everything would fall apart for Adams and the Hawkeyes in the fifth inning. The Nittany Lions scored three runs on two run-scoring singles and a triple, and would push the lead to 6-1. Iowa only scored one more run and lost 6-2.
The Hawkeyes could not come up with clutch hits with runners on base. They managed five hits, but left eight runners on base. Ace Jalen Adams did not have her best stuff, and the Hawkeyes' offense sputtered when it mattered the most.
The Hawkeyes end the season with a 35-18 (15-7 Big Ten) record and will wait to see if they earn a bid to the NCAA Tournament.