Hawkeyes vs Minnesota Series Thread

ssckelley

Well-Known Member
Minnesota comes into Duane Banks Field with a 10-20 (1-5 conf) record to face the 17-12 (3-3) Hawkeyes. If you haven't had a chance to watch a Hawkeye game tonight's game will be televised live on BTN, so no streaming subscription fees! The other 2 games will be streamed live on BTN+, you can listen to the games on The Varsity Network along with a few area radio stations.

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I plan to watch some of the game live tonight until the Cubs start and then I'll be toggling back and forth. It looks like Mazur is going back to being the Friday night starter and he's got good stuff if you are able to catch some of the game tonight. Obviously Minnesota has their best starting pitcher going tonight as well so hopefully the offense can get it going.

Series notes are found here: https://hawkeyesports.com/news/2022/04/14/notes-hawkeyes-gophers-set-for-3-game-series/

LET'S GO HAWKS!
 
Good win for the Hawks! A sweep would be nice!

A sweep is almost necessary if Iowa has any hopes of reaching the regionals through an at large. Even if Iowa sweeps Minnesota they lose RPI points because of how terrible Minnesota's record is.

Fingers crossed! The good news is Iowa has almost all their bullpen (minus Nedved) and they just beat Minnesota who had, by far, their best pitcher on the mound. Minnesota has a 6.44 team ERA, hopefully the bats can take advantage.
 
A sweep would move the Hawks to 20-12 and 6-3 in the conference, which will likely be no worse than tied for 3rd in the BTen. And they would have already played 2 of the top 5 teams in the conference.
I'm no baseball expert, but my biggest concern with this team is they really struggle to 'manufacture' a run when they need it, i.e. they really seem to struggle at 'small ball'. Vs. Illinois last weekend they had multiple lead-off guys on base when 1 run would have won the game but they couldn't bunt and move the runner along and get a hit. I think Heller sees this and even when the Hawks were up 5 or 6 runs last night when a runner got on 1st base he tried a couple bunts to move the runner along and they just couldn't get it done.
Illinois' ability to manufacture single runs won them last week's series, and I think it's something Iowa's really gotta get right if they hope to win close games going forward.
 
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