Hlas: NCAA baseball regional in Iowa City within reach

IOWA CITY - It improved to a sharp 17-3 in the Big Ten standings following a 10-2 drubbing of Minnesota Saturday afternoon at Banks Field, but Iowa's 15th-ranked baseball team lost ground in the Big Ten baseball standings.

Illinois swept a doubleheader from Rutgers Saturday in Champaign to improve to 18-1 in league play. Whaddya gonna do? Iowa doesn't play Illinois this season unless they meet in the Big Ten tournament May 20-24.

It's a 24-game league schedule played over eight straight weekends. The Hawkeyes have gone as far away as Maryland for Big Ten games, and they'll start a three-game series at Rutgers Thursday to close league play. But they won't face their Illinois neighbors.

That's life in a 14-school conference (It's 13 for baseball), and it doesn't seem to bother the Hawkeyes.

Senior starters Eric Toole and Dan Potempa and Saturday's winning pitcher, Blake Hickman, all more or less shrugged when asked about not being able to play Illinois.

'We don't feel cheated. We expect to play them down the road at the Big Ten tournament,” said Potempa, who had three hits and four RBIs Saturday.

Potempa's first-inning bases-clearing double was followed in the second inning by Tyler Petyon's bases-loaded triple. That's efficiency, the kind Iowa has built a season upon.

An Iowa-Illinois series would have really ratcheted up college baseball interest in these parts, but a meeting or even two at the Big Ten tourney in Minneapolis' Target Field would be cool, too.

'Sure, you want to play them (in the regular-season),” Iowa Coach Rick Heller said. 'But we try to keep winning in case they fall. They have to play Nebraska next week, and those games are going to mean something.”

There's a bigger-picture thing going on here, though in true baseball fashion it's not being loudly discussed because this is a one-day-at-a-time sport if ever one existed.

Namely, if the Hawkeyes close out the season strong here against Minnesota Sunday, at Rutgers Thursday through Saturday, and at the Big Ten tourney, they'll be in line to host one of the NCAA tournament's 16 four-team regionals.

'That would be awesome,” Toole said. 'Especially making the regional. I think that would be outstanding.”

'It would be huge,” said Hickman, who improved to 8-1 with six more innings of solid pitching. 'For the fans here to see us play at that time, it would be huge. Not only for now, but the future (of the program).”

Heller didn't undersell the prospect of an NCAA regional here, saying 'It would be big not only for the program, but for the University of Iowa and our state.”

Iowa has never hosted an NCAA baseball tournament game, and hasn't even been to that event since 1990. Several members of the '90 Hawkeyes were feted on the field before Saturday's game, and led the crowd in the singing of 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch.

To see their 2015 counterparts breezing to a victory before a gathering of 2,437 had to make the old Hawkeyes feel almost as good about the present as much as their past. A small set of temporary bleachers was brought in here Thursday to accommodate the crowd, and it got put to good use Saturday.

Iowa has already applied to be an NCAA host should its record validate it. D1Baseball.com currently projects the Hawkeyes (36-12 overall) as a regional host, and that was before wins over the Gophers here Friday night and Saturday.

To be a regional host team, Heller said, 'means you've been consistent all year. We haven't lost a series since the season began. That means you've played about as well as you can play.”

But in the meantime, Iowa takes on the Gophers again Sunday, at 1 p.m. One game at a time has worked just fine for the Hawkeyes, and they dare not start looking beyond that now.

Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@thegazette.com

Facebook: 'Mike Hlas - The Gazette”

Twitter: @Hlas