Lots of Big Ten possibilities for Iowa baseball team, good and bad

CEDAR RAPIDS — Here’s what we know for certain. Not much.

The University of Iowa baseball team still can win the Big Ten Conference regular-season championship. It still can finish lower than eighth place and not make the league tournament.

The likeliest thing to happen? Probably finishing somewhere between first and eighth.

The Hawkeyes have two Big Ten series remaining, including three games this weekend at Banks Field against last-place Northwestern. Game times are 6:05 Friday night, 2:05 Saturday afternoon and 1:05 Sunday afternoon.

Iowa is 10-8 in the conference after losing two of three games last weekend at Nebraska. The Hawkeyes won the finale early Sunday night, 4-1, behind the brilliant pitching of Brody Brecht, who went seven innings, allowing two hits and a run, striking out 11.

Projected as a late first-round Major League Baseball Draft pick by MLB.com, Brecht has had back-to-back great starts after struggling, especially with his control, a lot of this season. He went 7 2/3 innings, giving up one hit and an unearned run, striking out 12 two weeks ago against Rutgers.

The Iowa-Nebraska series was interrupted by wet weather, with Saturday’s game being suspended and picked back up Sunday after a rain delay.

“I just can’t say enough about the kids’ resilience hanging in,” Iowa Coach Rick Heller said. “It’s not easy to do. We got warmed up, hit, did infield and bang, close to game time it hit. Then to sit around that long. Kudos to our kids for hanging in there.”

Purdue and Illinois lead the Big Ten with identical 11-4 league records. Iowa concludes Big Ten play next weekend with three games against the Illini at Champaign.

Nebraska, Indiana and Michigan are tied for third at 10-5. Iowa is next, followed by Michigan State and Ohio State at 7-8 and Maryland at 8-10.

One thing is a cinch: Iowa will need to win the Big Ten tournament to qualify for the NCAA tournament. It has a 25-18 overall record and an RPI of 102.

It also is coming off a rather embarrassing 21-14 non-conference loss Wednesday night at home to a North Dakota State team that is 14-24-1. The game lasted four hours and 22 minutes.

NDSU had 21 hits and drew 10 walks.

“The message is you can’t just walk out of the locker room and think that is OK,” Heller said. “It’s not OK, not at all. The pitching tonight was as bad as I have seen. When you combine 20 hits with the free bases, you don’t give yourself a chance to come back.”

Iowa has a 5.94 team earned run average, which rather surprisingly ranks sixth in the 13-team Big Ten. Northwestern (13-27 overall) is last with a 7.33 ERA.

The Wildcats are 2-13 in the Big Ten, beating only Maryland (twice). After the Illinois series, Iowa wraps the regular season with a midweek game against Illinois-Chicago and three games May 16-18 against Florida International at Principal Park in Des Moines.

The Big Ten tournament begins May 21 at Omaha.

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