On March 23, Iowa earned its most impressive win of the season with a 5-1 defeat of No. 11 Indiana in the second game of a doubleheader.
The Hawkeyes will try to keep that momentum rolling into their game against Bradley at 4:05 p.m. today.
The Braves, however, enter the bout with momentum of their own. Bradley is coming off of a dominant performance in which it beat Chicago State, 16-1, to improve its record to 12-5.
It’ll be a battle of two offenses; Bradley has eight players batting over .300. The Braves are led by junior Luke Mangieri, who comes in with a .379 average and 9 RBIs.
Iowa, on the other hand, only has two hitters above the .300 mark, but those two have been as consistent as can be. Junior right fielder Robert Neustrom leads the team with a .346 average, 11th in the Big Ten. He also has 9 RBIs and 4 home runs.
Senior catcher Tyler Cropley, who hits behind Neustrom in the batting order, follows him in batting average as well. The native of McCook Lake, South Dakota, is hitting .342 with 2 home runs and a team high 17 RBIs.
The next best average on the team is more than 60 points lower; Matt Hoeg comes in with a .278 average, so the Hawkeyes know it’s important to be more steady as the season goes on.
“I would say we need to stay a little more consistent,” Neustrom said after Iowa’s win over Loras on March 21. “We scored 6 runs against St. Louis and another 6 runs [March 21], and that hadn’t really been the case early in the season. We just need to stay consistent in scoring runs … There have been some bumps in the road on every level, but as long as we stay consistent, we’ll be all right.”
Freshman lefty Trenton Wallace is set to take the mound for Iowa, and he has quite the performance to follow. In the Hawkeyes’ last win, over the Hoosiers, Brady Schanuel pitched a gem, allowing 1 hit and 4 walks in 7 innings while striking out a career-high 11.
Schanuel’s performance, along with Sunday’s cancellation of the series finale, leaves the bullpen with a lot of innings in it.
“Brady was throwing strikes when he wanted to throw strikes it seemed like, when it really mattered,” DH Chris Whelan said after Schanuel’s outing. “His going deep in the ballgame is huge for our bullpen.”
The Braves will counter by sending right-handed pitcher Mitch Janssen to the bump. Janssen sports a 1-0 record but has an ERA of 8.10 after allowing 16 runs in 16.2 innings of action.
After having three games canceled and one postponed during the past week, Bradley hasn’t competed since March 21, leaving plenty of fresh arms to battle the Hawkeyes.
Combine that with stellar hitting, and the Braves could cause some problems.