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Iowa Hawkeyes baseball team regroups as Big Ten Conference tournament arrives
Iowa plays Wednesday against Rutgers in expanded 12-team tourney with a unique new format
May. 20, 2025 5:21 pm, Updated: May. 20, 2025 6:34 pm
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IOWA CITY — There are pools now. And tiebreakers.
The Big Ten Conference baseball tournament has a sort of convoluted formula this week. That’s what happens when the league expands and 12 schools instead of eight qualify.
The tournament got underway Tuesday morning at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Neb., with Illinois beating Michigan in extra innings. Rutgers then beat Indiana, with Nebraska playing Michigan State late.
The Iowa Hawkeyes are slated to play their first tourney game Wednesday night at 6 against Rutgers.
“It’s a fresh start,” Iowa Coach Rick Heller told reporters Tuesday morning. “Everybody is 0-0 right now.”
Twelve of the 17 baseball-playing schools in the Big Ten qualified for the tournament, with each of them seeded according to conference record and corresponding tiebreaking procedures. That’s how the pools were determined.
Oregon is the top seed and has Nebraska (8 seed) and Michigan State (12) in Pool A. UCLA, which tied Oregon for the regular-season championship, is the second seed and is matched with Michigan (7) and Illinois (11) in Pool B.
Iowa is the third seed and has sixth-seeded Indiana and 10th-seeded Rutgers in Pool C. Pool D consists of fourth-seeded Southern California, fifth-seeded Washington and ninth-seeded Penn State.
The winner of each pool advances to the tournament semifinals Saturday, with the Pool A winner playing the Pool D winner and winners of Pool B and C squaring off. Sunday is the tournament championship at 2 p.m., with the winner automatically qualifying for next week’s regional play of the NCAA tournament.
Did you get all that? There’s more.
If there are ties in any of the pools, the higher-seeded team advances. Thus in Pool C, the Rutgers-Iowa winner clinches a semifinal spot, with Iowa’s Friday afternoon (2 p.m.) pool-play game against Indiana meaningless.
With Illinois upsetting Michigan on Tuesday, a UCLA win Wednesday over Illinois automatically advances the Bruins to the semis, rendering their final pool-play game moot.
“It’s definitely going to take getting used to, to really understand what’s going on,” Heller said. “With the 12-team tournament, things had to change to allow more teams in. All of us went to work at looking at other tournaments throughout the country that made sense. We kind of copied the ACC format.
“What you want is you want everybody to feel like they’ve got a fair shot to win it. You don’t want to give the top two seeds, or whatever, such an advantage that you really don’t have a chance to beat them. But you also don’t want teams to get beat up so badly that they’re limping into the regional next week if they happen to make it. This was the format that we all came up with and voted on.”
Iowa (32-20-1) comes limping into this tournament. With a chance this past weekend to win the Big Ten regular-season title for the first time in 30 years, the Hawkeyes instead were swept by nationally fifth-ranked Oregon.
Iowa has gone 1-8-1 in its last 10 games and quite likely needs to win this tournament to secure an NCAA spot.
“I told everybody after our game Saturday that I thought they all needed to go fishing, come back Monday afternoon and let’s get ready to go,” Heller said. “Have fun again and enjoy the challenge that we have.”
The Big Ten announced Tuesday its all-conference teams, with Iowa represented on the first team by junior starting pitchers Cade Obermueller and Aaron Savary and sophomore Reese Moore (utility). Second-team members are senior starting pitcher Reece Beuter and graduate catcher Daniel Rogers.
Senior outfielder Ben Wilmes (who has been out injured) was selected a third-teamer. Third baseman Jaixen Frost was named to the league’s All-Freshman Team, freshman catcher Max Burt was honored with a sportsmanship award.
The Big Ten Player of the Year is UCLA sophomore shortstop Roch Cholowsky. He also won the Defensive Player of the Year.
Michigan State junior Joseph Dzierwa is the Big Ten Conference Pitcher of the Year. First baseman Jake Hanley of Indiana is the league Freshman of the Year.
Oregon’s Mark Wasikowski was voted Coach of the Year.
Comments: (319)-398-8258, jeff.johnson@thegazette.com
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