Likely out of NCAA tournament contention, Iowa baseball plays final series

IOWA CITY — It doesn’t look good for the Iowa baseball team. Honestly, it looks pretty bad.

The Hawkeyes complete the regular season this weekend with a three-game series at Michigan State. Unless something totally unexpected happens, they’ll complete the season as a whole.

Losses in two of three games last weekend at Northwestern has taken Iowa off the board of everyone predicting the NCAA regional pairings. That included a walk-off loss in the Sunday finale.

The Hawkeyes are 23-18, in fifth place in the Big Ten Conference with a RPI at 89. It’s 64 teams in the postseason.

Do the math.

“The mood was pretty somber after Sunday’s game and how that ended,” said Iowa Coach Rick Heller. “But we’ve bounced back all year. They’re a resilient group, an older group, their last weekend if we don’t make the tournament. That’s what the message is going to be. There is only one option. You keep playing, you fight and hopefully play good this weekend. That message can never change. You hope that you’ve got the leadership within the clubhouse that those guys will go out there and give a great effort.”

The especially frustrating part about things is that Iowa played what has turned out to be the Big Ten’s best teams early in the season. They’d be first-place Nebraska, Michigan, Indiana and suddenly red-hot Maryland.

The final four series of the regular season have been against teams under .500 and in the lower half of the Big Ten when Iowa played them. Iowa took two of three games against Penn State, lost two of three to Illinois and Northwestern.

That’s losses in five of seven games at the absolute wrong time of the season.

Michigan State is 17-24 but has won four of its last six games. Even if Iowa sweeps games Friday night and Saturday and Sunday afternoons, it won’t gain much in the RPI.

Still, a sweep is the goal.

“Yeah, that’s what you’ve got to do,” Heller said. “But that’s no small task. I’ve told you this many times, it’s not who you play in this league and college baseball in general, it’s when you play them. Unfortunately for us, we hit Illinois and Penn State … We were lucky enough to get two out of three against Penn State. But we hit Penn State, Illinois and then Northwestern when they were having good days, having good weekends.

“You follow Michigan State the last couple of weeks and what they’ve done. They go out to Rutgers and how many runs did they score? Close to 40. You just hope you don’t run into a situation where you play really well and still lose based on how the other team is going. So we’ll try to control ourselves.”

Comments: (319)-398-8258, jeff.johnson@thegazette.com