Iowa hit, pitched, and played defense well enough to earn its first Big Ten victory of the season
By Courtney Baumann
Iowa softball head coach Marla Looper believes that in order to win games, her team has to put together at least two of three things — sharp defense, strong pitching, and a solid offensive attack.
The Hawkeyes did all three on Sunday, when they won their first Big Ten game of the season over Purdue, 10-3.
Eleven hits, three of which were home runs, along with the pitchers throwing more than 62 percent of their pitches for strikes allowed Iowa to get on the board and make Purdue work for hits, which the Boilermakers succeeded in doing. They put up 12 hits throughout the game, but Iowa’s defense held them to just 3 runs. Purdue left eight runners on base.
“I’m proud of our girls for hanging in there, sticking it out, and finally getting that win. It feels good,” Looper said after the game. “There’s still some things we can always get better at, but it feels good right now.”
In order to continue to have success, the Hawkeyes must keep putting together at least two of those three facets, something they have had problems with earlier in the season.
Iowa also hasn’t had the best of luck when it comes to errors this season. The total in the Hawkeyes’ first 30 games is 40, which puts them at .953 fielding percent. To put that number in perspective, Iowa sits at No. 185 in Division-1 fielding percentage. Florida, which is No. 1, has committed only 17 errors.
While the pitching thus far is superior to last season’s, it hasn’t really been Iowa’s strong suit, either. Three of Iowa’s five pitchers have ERAs above 4.00, and the average among all of them is 3.85. Opponents are batting nearly .300.
Iowa’s batting, however, has continued to be on. The team has racked up 5 or more hits in 23 games, including eight games in which the total was in the double digits.
Recently, the Hawkeyes have been stringing together timely hits and bringing runners home. Earlier in the season, Looper noted this as an issue, but her Hawks seem to have taken her words to heart.
“Throughout the season we’ve either had our pitching and defense but not our hitting, or we had our defense and hitting but not our pitching,” sophomore Allie Wood said. “We’ve really been studying film and trying to get our play to the next level; we just need a little push.”
The Hawkeyes like to credit their hitting success to new hitting coach Jake Schumann, who served as the hitting coach at Ole Miss during the 2015 season. During his time there, Mississippi set single-season records in batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, runs scored, RBIs, home runs, triples, walks, and steals.
Both Sammi Gyerman and Holly Hoffman said Schumann works closely with them during the games.
Throughout the first two innings of the game on April 2, which Iowa lost 8-7; the team did not get a hit. The first-year coach spoke with the players, though, and got them to get things started in the third inning.
“Coach Schumann really worked a lot with us,” Gyerman said after the game on April 2. “We were definitely struggling in the first few innings, but he basically just told us that we need to bear down and hit the ball, or else we’re going to keep losing.”
