By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Brody Brecht will soon be making a substantial amount of money as a professional baseball pitcher, and he showed why on Sunday in spectacular fashion.

The Iowa baseball team’s hard-throwing right hander allowed just one hit over 7 2/3 innings and had 12 strikeouts as Iowa defeated Rutgers 5-1 to sweep the three-game series at Duane Banks Field.

Brecht also limited his walks to just three as Iowa’s improved to 9-6 in Big Ten conference play and has now won four straight games.

“I think everything was working for me,” Brecht said. “Fastball kind of teetered off a little bit late, but I felt good.”

That was different than his warm-up session for Sunday’s start since Brecht said he struggled to locate his slider in the bull pen.

“I’m being honest, in my pre-game I don’t know if I hit with my slider,” Brecht said. “It’s kind of just one of those days. You’ve just got to have full confidence in yourself and that’s what I tell myself every time I’m out there.”

Brecht credited pitching coach Sean McGrath for calling a good game and the Iowa position players for doing their part.

“I thought Sean called a great game and position players made a lot of plays for me,” Brecht said. “So, I’ve got to give a lot of credit to them.”

Brecht, a 6-foot-4, 235-pound native of Ankeny, and a former receiver on the Iowa football team, is considered a potential first-round pick in the 2024 amateur baseball draft should he choose to come out this season.

His fastball has been clocked at 104 miles per hour, and his slider is close to unhittable when Brecht is throwing it for strikes as was the case in Sunday’s game.

“He did a fantastic job for us today,” said Iowa coach Rick Heller. “He stepped up big time and he hadn’t been feeling the greatest. He worked really hard this week to get back to full health and he said he was ready to go yesterday, so that was a good sign.

“And then he went out today and he just pitched.”

Brecht, like many of Iowa’s pitchers this season, has struggled from allowing too many walks and free bases. It has caused his pitch count to climb early in games, and that has kept him from going deep into some games.

But that changed on Sunday as Brecht consistently got ahead of the batters, much to the delight of Heller.

Iowa only used two pitchers as Ben DeTaeye pitched the final 1 1/3 innings to secure the win.

“It just felt like Brody was really in control of himself today,” Heller said.

Iowa scored five runs despite only having two hits, both of which came from third baseman Raider Tello. The California native belted a double and a triple and drove in four runs.

Iowa scored three runs in the third and two in the fifth.

“Thank goodness for Raider,” Heller said.

Iowa was coming off back-to-back series losses against Michigan and Ohio State, so to get a sweep against Rutgers provided a much-needed boost for the only Big Ten team that was ranked heading into the season.

“The importance of sweeping this series is huge,” Tello said. “It helps us feel we’re getting this confidence back.

“We were highly touted and highly talked about coming into this season, and a series like this, we come out and we just don’t win, we come out and do what we need to do. Pitching was phenomenal. We scored when we needed to, and it’s a big deal, especially going into a rivalry series against Nebraska.”

Iowa and the third-place Cornhuskers will play a three-game series in Lincoln beginning on Friday.

Heller has been using Cade Obermueller as the Friday starter, followed by Marcus Morgan on Saturday and Brecht on Sunday.

Brecht started the season as the Friday starter, but he struggled with his command.

He switched to the Sunday starter to get more work in the bullpen, and that strategy paid huge dividends against Rutgers.

Iowa’s ability to limit the free bases and walks against Nebraska could go a long way in determining how the series plays out.

“In virtually every one of our losses that has been the cause,” Heller said of too many free bases.