OMAHA, Neb. – The University of Iowa baseball team was defeated by Illinois, 4-2, in 10 innings on Thursday afternoon at Charles Schwab Field.
The Hawkeyes dropped their second straight extra innings game to be eliminated from the Big Ten Tournament.
“I thought our guys played really hard today,” said head coach Rick Heller. “It was a tough day to score in this ballpark with the wind blowing. Omans did a really nice job staying on the edges and locating his changeup at the bottom and we didn’t do a very good job at laying off the edges early in the count.”
The Illini led 2-0 through six and a half innings before Iowa plated two in the bottom of the sixth to tie the game. With the teams tied after regulation the Illini plated two runs in the top of the 10th.
Iowa had the bases loaded in the bottom half of the 10th with no outs, when Michael Seegers hit into a double play as Kyle Huckstorf was ruled out for force slide interference. The call was reviewed and confirmed, and a strikeout ended the game stranding the tying run on second.
“Just like yesterday we played hard and competed hard, but we didn’t play our best baseball,” said Heller. “We didn’t give up, we fought hard. The first two runs were on a walk and a sac fly, which probably wouldn’t have happened if we played clean baseball. How it all went down at the end I don’t really understand. I still don’t know what they saw on the double play, and I’ve watched it plenty of times. To have it end like that, I don’t really know what else to say.”
Cade Obermueller started on the mound for Iowa. The Iowa City, Iowa, native threw five innings and allowed one run on three hits. He struck out seven and walked five. Anthony Watts threw 3 2/3 innings of relief and allowed one unearned run on three hits.
Ganon Archer and Ben DeTaeye each threw 2/3 of an inning to close out the game. Archer allowed two runs on two hits and was tagged with the loss.
Davis Cop was 3-for-5 with a double to lead the Hawkeyes offensively. Gable Mitchell and Cade Moss each tallied an RBI for the Hawkeyes.
