Iowa baseball team has final Big Ten series with a lot on the line

CEDAR RAPIDS — Through all the bullpen issues, the inconsistent starting pitching, the injuries, the hard-to-swallow late-inning losses, not meeting preseason expectations, the Iowa Hawkeyes baseball team still has a chance.

A chance to qualify for the Big Ten Conference tournament. A good one.

A chance to make the NCAA tournament. Win ‘A’ and you get ‘B.’

A chance to win the Big Ten regular-season championship. Believe it or not.

Iowa travels this weekend to first-place Illinois for three games: Friday night, Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Win them all, and you never know.

“Hey, we’ve won 28 games now,” Iowa Coach Rick Heller said on The Gazette’s “Hawk Off The Press” podcast. “We’re 10 games over .500. We’ve put ourselves in a really good spot to make the conference tournament .. We’ll just keep plugging away.”

Iowa is 28-18 overall after sweeping Northwestern last weekend at Banks Field. The Hawkeyes are 13-8 in the Big Ten, which places them in fifth place.

Illinois is on top at 13-5. Then it’s Purdue, Nebraska and Indiana at 12-6 each.

That’s a logjam.

Michigan is 11-7, Michigan State 9-9 and Maryland 10-11 and in eighth place. Ohio State is 8-10, Minnesota and Penn State 7-11.

The top eight teams in the league qualify for the Big Ten tournament, which is May 21-26 at Omaha, Neb.

This is the final conference series for Iowa, with everyone but the Hawkeyes and Maryland having one last series next week. Iowa will play three weekend games at Principal Park in Des Moines against Florida International.

“On the flip side of that, we’re sitting here talking about getting into the tournament, and if we’re able to go down and sweep Illinois, we could still mathematically win the league,” Heller said. “That’s how crazy the league has been this year.”

Heller said he hopes starting pitcher Cade Obermueller will be able to return this week after missing the last two weeks with an injury. The coach said the sophomore lefty will likely be limited to around 50 pitches.

Outfielders Sam Petersen and Kyle Huckstorf are out for the rest of the season with respective injuries. Petersen, utility guy Andy Nelson and catcher Cade Moss all have missed chunks of this season for Iowa.

It has been one of those seasons.

Illinois, by the way, leads the Big Ten with 88 home runs this season, which Heller said, is at least partly a byproduct of its cozy ballpark.

“It’s a ballclub that is built for their home field,” Heller said. “It’s a bit of a launching pad. You see their record at home, and I think they’ve only lost once or maybe twice at home. You look at their road stuff, and they’re fairly human.They’re built for power and home runs.

“We’re hoping maybe we’ll catch a break, and maybe the cold front follows us. It’s followed us all season, seems like the wind has blown in against us all season.”

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