The Hawkeyes put a huge crimp in their tournament hopes during a weekend series at Illinois.

By Courtney Baumann
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After the Iowa softball team lost its last game in a three-game weekend series at Illinois, the Hawks’ hopes to make the Big Ten Tournament are next to nada.

Iowa sits dead last in the Big Ten standings, behind Maryland by a half-game. Michigan State is in place to be the No. 12 seed.

The only chance Iowa has of making the tournament is if the Hawkeyes win all three games over Minnesota this weekend and the Spartans lose all of theirs. Even then, it would come down to a tiebreaker for the last seed in the tournament.

Iowa and Illinois played a double-header April 29, with Illinois winning the both games, 5-1. The Illini then blanked Iowa in the third, 8-0 in five innings.

Shayla Starkenburg and Elizabeth Wiegand took the losses for the Hawkeyes in the first two games. Starkenburg gave up all 5 runs, only 2 earned. Wiegand also gave up 5 runs, 4 earned. Illinois junior Breanna Wonderly pitched two complete games, winning both.

Iowa struggled with errors, registering 2 in the first and 3 in the second, but those seemed minuscule to what haunted the Hawkeyes in the last game. The Hawks committed 8 errors in the last game of the series.

Starkenburg pitched only two-thirds of the first inning in the final game. She allowed 6 runs, 4 earned, on 3 hits, 3 walks, and 3 errors.

The Hawks had merely 14 hits during the three games, with Kaitlyn Mullarkey leading Iowa offensively. The junior had the only run in the first game, had 2 hits for the team in the second, and had 1 of just 2 hits for Iowa in the third.

Iowa will finish its regular season this week when it travels to Iowa State on Tuesday and rounds out Big Ten competition with a visit from Minnesota for a three-game series Friday through May 8.

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