Northern Illinois no match for surging Iowa baseball team
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Barely a week ago, the Iowa baseball team was limping along with a 6-11 record, causing some of the players to get restless.
Rick Heller knew it wasn’t time to panic, though, not with so many games still left to be played and not with an experienced roster.
His calm approach is now paying dividends as Iowa won for the fourth time in its last five games, defeating Northern Illinois 12-3 on Tuesday at Duane Banks Field.
Iowa smacked four home runs in a game for the first time since 2010 against Coe College while improving to 10-12 on the season.
"We knew there was a risk that if things didn’t go our way early with the schedule we were playing that it might be that situation," Heller said recently. "We went through some times maybe two or three weeks ago when some guys were starting panic a little bit because I know their expectations are high coming off last year. They want to do the same thing, if not more, and they see a loss here and a loss there.
"We were able to regroup and our captains did a real good job and our seniors did a really good job of keeping guys focused on the process. And that’s all you can do. If you just go out and do the best you can every day and not scoreboard watch and try to win each pitch, that’s about all you can do in baseball and we’re getting better at it."
Trailing 1-0 after one inning on Tuesday, the Hawkeyes connected on home runs in the second, third, and fourth innings to take a 4-1 lead. Iowa provided itself with plenty of cushion in the sixth inning by sending 11 batters to the plate and scoring eight runs.
Senior Tyler Peyton sparked the rally by pounding his first career grand slam home run in the sixth.
Iowa’s other home runs were hit by freshman Robert Neustrom in the second inning, by Nick Roscetti in the third and by Daniel Aaron Moriel in the fourth.
Iowa’s turnaround started when it rallied in the bottom of the ninth inning to defeat Bradley 7-6 on March 23 at Banks Field.
Iowa then won two of three games against Maryland in the Big Ten opening series this past weekend at Banks Field.
So the Hawkeyes already had momentum when they took the field on Tuesday in a game that was originally scheduled for Wednesday. It was moved up a day because of the threat of adverse weather on Wednesday.
Iowa returns to action Friday, opening a three-game series at Minnesota. Game time is 3:05 p.m. (CT) from Siebert Field in Minneapolis.