Iowa baseball team has opportunity to solidify its postseason chances

CEDAR RAPIDS — How legit are they?

Are they in the NCAA baseball tournament? Are they not in the NCAA baseball tournament?

If they’re not in, what do they need to do in the final six games of the regular season to assure they get in?

So many questions surrounding these Iowa Hawkeyes. Some of the answers will become evident in the next two weeks, including this weekend.

Iowa hopped on a bus early Thursday afternoon for a short drive to Des Moines, where it will play a three-game non-conference series against Oregon State. Game times are 6:35 Friday night, 3:35 Saturday afternoon and 12:05 Sunday afternoon at Principal Park, home of the Triple-A professional Iowa Cubs.

The Hawkeyes have a chance to impress a lot of people this weekend, as Oregon State (35-12) is ranked 10th nationally by D1Baseball.com and 11th in the USA Today coaches poll. The Beavers are a conference independent this season.

“The weather is cooperating, which is big,” said Iowa Coach Rick Heller. “Then us having a good year, and them being as good as they always are, it’s a fun bye week for us, you know?”

Iowa (32-15 overall) leads the Big Ten Conference going into its conference bye weekend at 21-6. UCLA is second at 17-7, Oregon and Southern California third at 16-8 each.

The Hawkeyes conclude the regular season next weekend at home against Oregon. They have never won a Big Ten regular-season championship.

You’d have to think if they pull this thing off, they’ll be assured a spot in the NCAA field of 64, no matter what happens at the Big Ten tournament in two weeks. Of course, you win the tourney, you’re an automatic qualifier for an NCAA regional.

Where things could get kind of tricky for Iowa is if neither of those above things happen.

Its RPI going into this weekend is 67, which isn’t outstanding, by any means. It lost two of three last weekend at Washington, doesn’t play either UCLA or USC.

“Our focus is the next game, our focus is on being able to play our best and hopefully win a Big Ten regular-season championship. Then we’ll deal with everything from there,” Heller said. “If you look at Oregon State and their RPI (6), if we are able to play well and win some games, that’s a nice RPI boost for us. Same with Oregon (23) next week. But how we are handling it with our team is not really even talking about it.”

Heller said in his opinion the NCAA tournament selection committee has had different philosophies when it comes to picking at-large entries over the years. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, which canceled the 2020 season, RPI was only part of what the committee considered.

After COVID, Heller said the committee used RPI especially heavily, which hurt Iowa and Big Ten teams, in particular. This is the second year of the current committee, and it seemed to go back to a philosophy last season of considering RPI as only part of its selection process, he felt.

“The RPI is, it’s kind of a guide,” Heller said. “In baseball, especially, because it’s so unfair how the games are played. Us having to travel the first four weeks because of the weather puts you in a bad spot. Then us and a lot of northern teams are limited on who they can play non-conference in the mid-week just because of location. The California schools are kind of the same story.

“I thought they (used to do) a good job of saying ‘OK, here’s Iowa at 60 in the RPI. In reality that’s probably 35 or 40. Knowing that they were in a location where they had to travel early.’”

RPI talk aside, this Iowa team has control of a controllable, as the saying goes. Win, it’s in.

Don’t win, and sweat it out.

“We set out to be the best version of ourself every game,” Heller said. “We break it down, try and play clean on the mound and make them earn it. We try and play clean defensively. Then we pride ourselves on being a true team offense. We have nine guys who really grind pitchers out, try to be nine tough outs, pass the baton to the next guy and move on.

“We try and set out to do that every game, keep everything as simple as possible. At the end of the game, we look up at the scoreboard, and it’ll tell us how good of a job we did with that.”

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