Unlikely Hawkeye batter delivers victory in Big Ten Tourney game

MINNEAPOLIS - Nick Day's back still aches, even after sitting out 12 games in midseason. He batted only .115 since returning. Yet with one swing Wednesday, Day delivered Iowa's most dramatic and unlikely victory of the season on the first day of the Big Ten Tournament.

With the Hawkeyes trailing Ohio State by one run in the ninth inning and down to their last strike against closer Trace Dempsey, Day, the No. 9 hitter, pulled a two-run homer into the lower deck in left at Target Field. Day flung his helmet and disappeared into a mob of teammates at the plate to celebrate Iowa's 3-2 victory, while a shaken Dempsey stood with his hand covering his mouth.

'I'm still in shock,” Day said about 20 minutes later. He looked it, too. Iowa's 12 home runs ranked last in the Big Ten, and Target Field yields few of them. Who expected the Hawkeyes to win a game this way?

'I was really happy for Nick,” Iowa Coach Rick Heller said. 'He's really toughing it out. He's playing in a lot of pain now. He sat out 10 days hoping it would get better, but it really didn't. We just said, you're a senior, if you can tolerate the pain, tough it out. That's what he's been doing.”

With its sixth walk-off victory, Iowa (39-14) advanced to meet Michigan (34-23) at 5 p.m. today. Had Day not come through, the second-seeded Hawkeyes would have faced Indiana in the losers bracket Thursday morning. Ohio State (35-19), nationally ranked until three weeks ago, lost its fourth straight and eighth in 13 games.

'These last three weeks have been tough,” Ohio State Coach Greg Beals said. 'We easily could have won four or five of those games, but we're finding ways not to win games.”

Iowa led 1-0 going into the seventh, when Heller tried to squeeze one more inning out of starter Tyler Peyton as he neared 100 pitches. But Zach Ratcliff doubled, the first Ohio State leadoff batter to reach, eventually scoring on Tre' Gantt's sacrifice fly. Nick Hibbing finished the inning in relief, then gave up a tiebreaking homer to Pat Porter in the eighth.

Dempsey retired the first two batters in the ninth before walking pinch-hitter Eric Schenck-Joblinske. Heller, in the third base coach box, silently recalled a long home run Day hit against Western Illinois on April 1 and rooted for a repeat. Dempsey had other ideas, jumping ahead in the count 1-2. Then Dempsey left a slider over the plate.

'He gave me a couple of fastballs to hit early. I don't know why I didn't swing at them,” Day said. 'Then I was expecting a slider late. Pretty decent pitch. I don't know how I got to it.”