A look of disappointment glared on the face of Iowa head softball coach Karl Gollan as he left the dugout for media availability upon an embarrassing loss to Illinois State on Tuesday.
The Hawkeyes fell to the Redbirds, 2-1, in 10 innings after neither team scored in the first seven frames. While the Iowa offense stalled, the strong defense kept it in the game until the very end.
“Probably can’t write it down,” Gollan said with a chuckle when asked about his message to the team after the loss. “It wasn’t a really friendly message.”
The Hawkeyes didn’t commit a single error all game and took away multiple hits from Illinois State. Second-year shortstop Soo-Jin Berry was solid all night defensively. In a game where she struggled at the plate, her leadership and strong defensive performance helped keep Iowa in it.
“Just constantly talking,” Berry said about how she leads defensively. “Jena [Young] also, having her next to me always talking as well, helps me.”
The defense has been a bright spot for the Hawkeyes all season, especially with the middle infield duo of Berry and Young leading the group.
“They’ve been solid up the middle for us all year,” Gollan said of Berry and Young. “What people don’t realize is that not only do they perform at a high level but they’re key to positioning the rest of the defense and hopefully keeping us in the right spot when the balls are hit, based on what the pitching strategy is at the time.
“They’ve been solid for us,” he added. “[It was] probably not a game for the scrapbook for either of them tonight, but you take the good with the bad, and you can’t be at that level all the time. Tonight, unfortunately, was just a night that everything lined up, and they probably both didn’t have the best night offensively together.”
The suffocating Iowa defense seems to come somewhat naturally as it isn’t necessarily a different focus for the Hawkeyes in practice.
“I think we stress both parts pretty much the same,” Berry said. “We do hitting in the morning, and then we do more hitting in the afternoon on top of defense, so I think they’re both kind of stressed the same amount.”
Both the infield and outfield got even work defensively for Iowa as Illinois State hit 11 groundouts and 12 flyouts. With pitchers Jalen Adams and Talia Tretton striking out seven combined hitters, the defense was put to work and showed up big.
The strong Hawkeye defense can be something to look forward to as it heads into crunch time for a bid in the NCAA playoffs, and Iowa will need to come up big in all facets to do so.
“Just constantly getting better,” Berry said when asked about what the team needs to do moving forward. “Trying to make up for what we didn’t do today and focus on all the positives so we can do better.”
That run starts with Maryland this weekend — a chance for Iowa to get back onto a smooth run.
“We’re going to have to run the table pretty good here,” Gollan said. “In the last four Big Ten series, we’re probably going to have to try to put up seven to eight wins out of that run. We still have some non-conference midweeks, and we’re going to have to take care of business in those.”