It’s been a roller-coaster ride for the Iowa baseball team this season.

The Hawkeyes have had their highs in recent weeks, but they have also had their lows.When Iowa was on a season-long eight-game winning streak, it traveled to Evanston to take on Northwestern, where the streak ended, and the Hawkeyes lost the series.

The next weekend, the Hawkeyes went on a journey to Lincoln to battle Nebraska, one of the hottest teams in the Big Ten at the time. Iowa took the first two games of the series, and in turn, took the series.

The weekend after that was another puzzling one. After winning the first game over Rutgers, which was in the bottom third of the conference, the Hawkeyes were stunned in the two games to close out the weekend.

The Sunday game against Rutgers was especially hard for Iowa. With the Hawkeyes trying to salvage the series after the April 22 loss, the Knights rattled off 8 runs in the first three innings on their way to a 13-5 victory.

Head coach Rick Heller has preached the importance of free bases throughout the season, but the first three Hawkeye pitchers to take the mound gave up a combined 6 walks and 1 hit-by-pitch in 4 innings of work.

When starting pitcher C.J. Eldred had surgery on his UCL, Iowa was faced with an unexpected turn of events on the mound, which affects the pitching depth every weekend.

“I feel like sometimes a lot of the guys, myself included, can make excuses in something like this,” third baseman Matt Hoeg said. “We just need to toughen up and find a way to get the job done. It’s basically as simple as that.”

Even after some tough losses, Iowa has the capability to do what Hoeg wants. Before the disappointing Northwestern series, the Hawkeyes swept a very historically solid UNLV team.

That’s just how the season has gone so far. After every high, there has been a humbling low, followed by yet another high. Still, after the two losses to Rutgers, the season isn’t over.

The Hawkeyes currently sit seventh in the Big Ten; eight teams make the conference tournament.

To add to their chances, the remaining four Big Ten series are all against teams that are below Iowa in the conference standings. That stretch begins this weekend against Penn State, who remains at the bottom of the conference with a wretched 2-10 Big Ten record.

“We just didn’t get it done,” pitcher Cole McDonald said. “Yeah, it’s just disappointing, but all we can really do is just look for it next week and get after it. Just got to put it behind us now.”

Head coach Rick Heller doesn’t think his team was too high after picking up the series win over Nebraska, as evidenced by winning the first game of the Rutgers series, 8-3.

After losing the Rutgers series, Heller said his team was at a crossroads. He said they could make plenty of excuses, such as losing Eldred for the season, but what he wants them to do is gain more confidence.