By Pete Ruden
The UNLV baseball team is used to playing in the sunlight and hot weather, but it won’t be like that when it takes on Iowa at Banks Field this weekend.
The weather won’t be very hot, but one team is heating up right now, and that’s the Hawkeyes. Iowa enters the series on a three-game winning streak after beating Purdue in the final two games of the series last weekend and taking down Grand View on Tuesday.Even though the game against the Vikings ended up being a win, it was only by 1 run, and there were numerous Hawkeye mistakes. Free bases and errors caused problems for the Hawkeyes throughout the game, and they know they need to fix that right away.
“Just clean up our mistakes,” first baseman Jake Adams said. “We gave up a lot of free bases to [Grand View], and if we clean up those, I think we’ll be fine.”
Outside of that, Iowa has been on fire at the plate, especially at the end of games. In the last two games of the Purdue series, Iowa scored 9 runs in the eighth inning.
In addition, the top five players of the batting order are all hitting .335 or better, with right fielder Robert Neustrom leading the charge at .379.
Just like the team’s offense, Iowa’s bullpen pitching has been spectacular in recent games. It wasn’t long ago that some were questioning the pitching depth, which had been thought to be a strength, but that has sure changed over the past week.
Zach Daniels has been huge; he is the reigning Big Ten Pitcher of the Week after going 2-0 without giving up a run.
In the past three games, Iowa’s bullpen has only given up 3 runs, which has allowed the Hawkeyes to cash in and pick up some important midseason victories.
Both of those aspects will be important when the Rebels come to town. Even though UNLV is only 10-17 this season and on an eight-game losing streak, it has been a historically solid team.
This season, the Rebels a victory over then-No. 7 Cal State-Fullerton while also taking then-No. 3 Texas Tech to extra innings.
To prepare, head coach Rick Heller said he took the Hawkeyes back to work on the fundamentals.
“The big thing that I know we will do is we’ll really have a focused batting practice [Wednesday] with a lot of drill work and get back to the basics,” Heller said after Tuesday’s win. “Then, other stuff that we normally do … All the stuff that you need to at least once or twice a week to be sharp for the weekend.”
Coming off of a Grand View game that was closer than it seemed to have been on paper, Iowa wants to add to UNLV’s losing streak.
But it isn’t all that often a quality nonconference program visits for a series from across the country, and that pumps the Hawkeyes up.
“I’m excited to play,” Neustrom said. “I think everybody else is, too. It’s good to get good teams out of conference to come up here and play us at our home turf, so I’m really excited.”