A great moment on Tuesday, but there is more work to be done for Hawkeye baseball team.

By Jake Mosbach
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Coming off the program’s most successful season in 26 years, the Hawkeye baseball players expected bigger things for the 2016 season, as they should have.

But even after the Tuesday night’s 7-6 wild walk-off win against Bradley, the Hawkeyes know that there’s still work to be done. They have a 7-11 record after the first chunk of nonconference action.

On Friday, they’ll welcome Maryland to Banks Field to kick off the conference schedule with a three-game series.

The series presents an opportunity for the Hawks to gain an early advantage in Big Ten play.

And with Nick Roscetti’s walk-off single up the middle Tuesday night, the players believe they just got a shot of confidence.

“This game got the energy pumping, really flowing,” Roscetti said after the game. “We just have to keep it up. We’ve just been catching some bad breaks, and some things haven’t been going our way. We just have to keep playing our game.”

Right-handed pitcher and first baseman Tyler Peyton believes that Tuesday’s game was perhaps a microcosm of how the season has gone so far. At one point during the game, the Hawks trailed 5-1.

Peyton said what went wrong in the early stages of Tuesday’s game were the same things that had failed all season long.

“Tonight, we were getting guys in good scoring position early, but guys just weren’t coming up clutch,” he said after the game. “We were just having some tough unlucky breaks early, like our whole season.”

Head coach Rick Heller has liked what he’s seen from the team during the nonconference games. Despite the losing record, Heller has seen a team that hasn’t quit.

He said that’s the most important takeaway during the nonconference schedule.

But at the same time, he knows the areas in which the team struggles.

The team has a few days to prepare for Maryland, and he believes that can be enough time to work out some of the kinks.

“If you were watching [Tuesday’s] game, there were some tough times,” Heller said. “Our freshmen really struggled on the mound. But it would’ve been really easy to say, ‘We’re not going to win today.’ ”

Now, as the team turns its attention to Big Ten play, the players, much like their coach, feel like they have a good gauge on what needs to be done to compete.

“It’s pretty simple,” Roscetti said. “Pitchers need to keep pitching, and for sure the hitters need to keep hitting the ball like we have the past few games and just keep going.”

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