Iowa Hawkeyes fall to UCLA in Big Ten Conference Baseball Tournament semifinals

CEDAR RAPIDS - It really was a terrific baseball season for the Iowa Hawkeyes. A rather unexpected terrific season.

But it’s most likely over.

Roch Cholowsky showed why he’s the Big Ten Conference’s Player of the Year, he and his UCLA teammates scoring seven times in the third and fourth innings to run away from Iowa, 9-3, Saturday afternoon in the semifinals of the Big Ten tournament at Omaha’s Charles Schwab Field.

Picked preseason to finish in the middle or lower half of the conference, Iowa instead went to the final weekend of the regular season with a legit shot to win a Big Ten championship for the first time in 30 years. Instead it got swept last weekend at home by Oregon and ended up losing two of three games in this tourney.

It has a 33-22-1 overall record, coming into the day with a RPI of 77 and going 2-10-1 down the stretch. That assuredly isn’t good enough for a NCAA tournament at-large bid.

“The game didn’t go how we wanted it to,” said Iowa Coach Rick Heller. “With how the wind was blowing today at the ballpark, we were hoping to keep it close until the late innings and see if we could find a way to get one. But UCLA is a very good team and had a great day.”

The 64-team NCAA field will be announced Monday. UCLA (42-15), which shared the league’s regular-season title with Oregon, is a NCAA regional team regardless of what happens in Sunday afternoon’s Big Ten tournament championship game.

Nebraska (31-27), this tourney’s No. 8 seed, will oppose the Bruins. Nebraska shocked top-seeded Oregon in a Saturday morning pool-play game rain delayed from Friday night and beat Penn State in Saturday night’s other semi.

Friday night’s postponement forced a movement of the Iowa-UCLA game from Saturday night (when it originally was scheduled to be played) to Saturday afternoon.

Sophomore shortstop Cholowsky isn’t eligible for the Major League Baseball draft until next summer, though there’s little doubt he’ll be in contention to be a top-five to top-10 overall pick. He went 3-for-5 with four RBIs Saturday, including a three-run home run in the bottom of the fourth inning to break this game open.

Cholowsky bunted through a wide-open right side of the infield and into short right field, hustling for a unique double that set up UCLA’s first two runs in the third. He doubled to the gap in right-center to bring home a run in the sixth.

“That was pretty cool,” Cholowsky told Big Ten Network about his bunt double. “Teams have started to put the shift on me, so I thought it was a good opportunity to put it down today. I got the opportunity, got a good pitch to do it on and thankfully got it down on the first try.”

UCLA peppered Iowa starting pitcher Aaron Savary for nine hits and seven runs in 3 1/3 innings, giving him just his second loss this season. The Hawkeyes had just five hits themselves, including Andy Nelson’s two-run home run to left field in the fifth inning.

“We needed a quality start from Savary," Heller said "Him getting us to at least the sixth inning was the hope, and with the way Aaron has pitched this season, we felt like that was very doable."

Nelson, as a fifth-year senior, is done at Iowa, as are key pitchers Reece Beuter, Bejamin DeTaeye and Brant Hogue. Ace starting pitcher Cade Obermueller most likely will move on to professional baseball, as he is projected to be a second-round MLB draft pick in July.

Pitchers Daniel Wright and Bryson Walker, and catcher Daniel Rogers are graduate students who also are out of eligiblity.

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