On April 27, the Iowa baseball team completed a three-game sweep over Indiana, winning its seventh consecutive series in a row, and finding itself on top of the Big Ten conference standings.
The Hawkeyes were the talk of the college baseball world for weeks, but all of that quickly came to a halt.
Less than a month later, head coach Rick Heller and his squad walked off Charles Schwab Field in Omaha after falling to UCLA in the Big Ten tournament semifinals, likely playing their last game of the season.
The once dominant force fans saw had disappeared down the stretch, and looked like a completely different team when the dust of the season settled.
Iowa went 2-10-1 over the last three weeks of the season, dropping their Rating Percentage Index [RPI] over 30 points, and missed out on not only a Big Ten regular season title, but a chance to play in the NCAA tournament.
What changed?
Well, to put it bluntly, there are two big reasons for the decrease in play — an increase in competition and a drop in offensive production.
After completing the sweep over the Hoosiers in late April, the Hawkeyes found themselves with a lackluster RPI despite the touted record.
Many fans questioned the legitimacy of the team. The biggest gripe was the team’s lack of wins over competitive opponents. While the overall record was impressive, the strength of schedule was lower than other teams that were on top of their respective conferences.
Nonetheless, the remaining two weeks of the regular season would be drastically different, facing top-15 opponents in Oregon State and Oregon, respectively.
The Hawkeyes remained competitive in a majority of these games, but the team ultimately fell short, learning quickly about the different levels of talent found in the college baseball landscape.
Iowa ended this stretch going 0-5-1 and finished the regular season with what seemed like little confidence.
Fueling this losing stretch was the sudden decline of offense.
Before the final month of the season, Heller’s lineup was consistently applying pressure on the opponents’ pitching staff, leading the Big Ten in a handful of offensive categories like batting average and runs.
The unit did a complete 180 over the last six games of the season, scoring just over two runs per game and getting shut out multiple times.
Heller and the rest of his coaching staff were shocked by this flip of the switch, saying that it wasn’t just a couple of guys falling into an offensive slump, but everyone.
“You can’t control it when you go into a little bit of a lull, when your hitters go into a little bit of a funk,” Heller said. “We didn’t really have anybody in a lull until it happened. Then it seemed like all of them went.”
There’s one conclusion that comes from this – the Hawkeyes played their worst brand of baseball when the competition was at its peak.
Some people might call this end to the season a choke, but that’s just baseball. The season is filled with ups and downs. What separates good teams from great teams is the ability to limit the damage when things don’t go your way.
Yes, the Hawkeyes struggled to win games in the remaining part of their schedule, with a handful of losses coming from blown saves and untimely errors.
However, Iowa was never able to get up, dust themselves off, and play the brand of baseball that got them here in the first place.
I wouldn’t call it a choke, but rather what the essence of the sport is all about.
“I just don’t know where things went off the track,” Heller said. “Usually, when things go off the track, you can feel it in your training, you can feel it in your clubhouse. That never happened.”