After Friday night’s game in which Iowa failed to push across any runs, the Hawkeye softball team wanted to get some offense going against rival Iowa State.
It didn’t even take an inning for Iowa to get on the board, as it struck in the bottom of the first inning on a 1-out RBI double by Mallory Kilian to make it 1-0 Iowa.
Kilian would later turn her strong start into an overall strong game; she finished 4-4 with 2 doubles, an RBI and a run.
“I just felt comfortable and was attacking balls,” Kilian said.
After the first inning, the Hawkeye offense went into hibernation while the Cyclones bats stirred out of their early inning slumber with a run in the third to tie the game at 1 apiece.
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The next 3 innings saw Iowa’s bats struggle while Iowa State continued to piled on the hits, threatening to score in every inning and finally getting two runs in the 6th, making it 3-1 in their favor.
Iowa’s pitching settled down once Kenzie Ihle took the mound, keeping it close enough for Iowa. The Hawkeyes finally broke through in the bottom of the eighth on a single from Allie Wood to make it 2-3.
They added another off a fielder’s choice in the ninth and had a chance to win the game with runners on second and third with no outs, but Iowa failed to score.
Because it was an exhibition game, the two teams decided not to play another inning.
Iowa’s coach Marla Looper was impressed with how her team started and finished the game.
“We started the game how we intended,” Looper said. “We kind of got away from our game plan a bit but luckily there at the end we were able to come back and tie it. We got to throw less pitches and get ahead.”