The Iowa baseball team picked up its fourth midweek win of the season with a 7-2 victory over St. Thomas Tuesday afternoon at Duane Banks Field.
Iowa leaned heavily on its bullpen with little offensive showing compared to its series with Lindenwood the weekend before.
The Hawkeyes spread nine different pitchers across the nine-inning game, giving up two hits, four walks, with ten total strikeouts on 34 batters faced.
Freshman Cole Moore made his fifth appearance and first start this season and delivered a shutout inning for the Hawkeyes with two strikeouts.
Following up Moore on the mound were five Hawkeye pitchers, each taking their own single inning. Junior Beau Leisure was the only Iowa pitcher during those five innings to give up a hit, and freshman Carter Wilcox gave up the only walk during his mound appearance in the third.
Iowa’s defense finally gave way to the patient St. Thomas lineup in the top of the seventh, with senior Justin Hackett struggling to land strikes for the Hawkeyes. Hackett landed just six of his 15 pitches for a strike, giving up two walks and a run off a deep double to right-center field by Adam Puder.
Attempting to minimize the St. Thomas scoring, Iowa made a mid-inning pitching change to graduate Joe Husak, who would get the Hawkeyes out of the inning, but gave up another run on a sacrifice fly.
St. Thomas would go scoreless through the last two innings thanks to stellar pitching by Husak and the closer, Tate Slagle.
After the big offensive series against Lindenwood, Iowa had to break out the small ball against the Tommies.
Giving Iowa a one-run lead in the bottom of the first was the veteran combination of a single from leadoff batter, Gable Mitchell, and an RBI single from fourth-year Caleb Wulf.
The Hawkeyes battled against the Tommies’ starting pitcher for the next two innings and his two replacements until the bottom of the fifth inning, when Iowa would plate two more runs to go up 3-0.
The following inning, the Hawkeyes would tag on two more runs with an RBI single by Mitchell, and he himself would score at the end of the inning with a balk.
Iowa also continued its streak of averaging five walks per game with six against the Tommies, three of which came from patient fourth-year Mitch Wood, bringing his season total to 10 walks.
The Hawkeyes moved to 11-5 on the season, earning their sixth win at home to remain undefeated in midweek contests.
Up Next
Iowa will travel to State College, Pennsylvania, for a three-game series with Penn State starting on Friday, March 13, at 4:30 p.m. on Big Ten Plus.