Iowa Baseball Season Preview - Final Thoughts

We have reached opening day for Iowa Baseball. They take the field at 2:00pm to take on Indiana State, which means we have reached the final day of our baseball previews. We’ll take a quick look at the Iowa schedule, as well as Rick Heller’s final thoughts on the season and a final prediction for the year.

SCHEDULE ANALYSIS

In non-conference play, the Hawkeyes have several matchups against some solid programs. Indiana State, Sam Houston State, Kansas State, South Alabama, Pepperdine and Southern are all opponents in the early season tournaments. The biggest opportunity is against #1 LSU on Feb 25th in Round Rock. The Hawkeyes also travel to Lubbock for a weekend series against #24 Texas Tech.

In Big Ten play, the biggest series of the season takes place in Iowa City. The #13 Maryland Terrapins visit Duane Banks Field during the first weekend of conference play from March 31-April 2. Outside of that, Iowa have tough series against Nebraska, Ohio State and Indiana. The first two series are in Iowa City, while the Huskers and Hoosiers landed in the top six of the preseason coaches poll.

The schedule has some big opportunities against ranked teams, but there are also plenty of games on the schedule that could be damaging to their NCAA Tournament chances if they lose too many. 28 games on the schedule are against quad 4 teams from last season. It’s best to root for Iowa’s opponents to win as many games as they can this year.

RICK HELLER FINAL THOUGHTS

“I think our schedule has a good balance of really hard, middle of the road and there are no easy ones, but some games that if you play well, you should be able to win. I think it’s a really good mix.”

“It definitely helps if you can find ways to win against the good RPI teams, but then on the other hand, you have to take care of business against the lower end teams because it really kills you if you lose there.”

“It’s great to be optimistic and I am. The reason I said it could be special team is the makeup. I feel like this team has a chance to have championoship level makeup and dealing with failure in a positive way and being a great teammate and everybody is going to go out there, play for the right resaons and not have their own seperate agenda.”

FINAL PREDICTION

There is plenty of reason to be optimistic with this version of the Iowa Baseball team. The lineup has a good mix of players that can hit for power and players that can get on base. The outfield has the potential to be the best since the 2015 Goodman, Toole, Booker trio from a defensive standpoint, while also boasting the potential to have breakout offensive seasons. The starting rotation starts with Ty Langenberg and then seemingly has several options for the rest of the weekend. The big thing to watch is the evolution of the bullpen group and how quickly players can fit into particular roles. If Brody Brecht and Marcus Morgan are reliable contributors, which it appears they are, since they are in the weekend rotation, then the ceiling is raised for the pitching staff.

There is no doubt that this team has NCAA Tournament capabilities. They have the last few years, but have lost a midweek here or there and have dropped some games down the stretch in Big Ten play that knocked them out. Whether they still deserved to be in or not? That’s a different story. However, this team feels like they can comfortably make the NCAA Tournament.

Final Prediction? The Hawkeyes finish second in the Big Ten and get an at-large berth to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2017.