By Pete Ruden
Iowa baseball’s Big Ten Tournament opening game against Maryland reflected its season in many ways.
It was a roller-coaster game; the Hawkeyes gained the lead, relinquished the lead, tied the game, and took the lead again in the first six innings.
In this circumstance, it ended with Iowa taking down the Terrapins, 9-8.
But throughout the game, it was impossible to tell who was going to come out on top.
While the game was back-and-forth, the offense was constant for both teams. The two combined for 17 runs on 27 hits.
It was seemingly going to be a pitchers’ duel with Maryland Big Ten Pitcher of the Year Brian Shaffer going up against Iowa’s Nick Gallagher, who earned second-team All-Big Ten honors.
It was anything but.
The squads used 6 home runs to keep the ties and lead changes going, making for an entertaining game.
The day culminated with one last lead change when Matt Hoeg plated best friend Tyler Cropley on a sacrifice fly in an 8-8 game.
“He’s been my best friend for the past three years, and we’ve been roommates for two or three years,” Hoeg said. “I knew I just had to hit a pop fly, and he’d be fast enough to get in.”
While Hoeg finished the job, Cropley got it started.
In the second inning, the second-team All-Big Ten selection smashed a home run to right to get the scoring off to the races in what was a wild one.
After Iowa built a 6-1 lead following the top of the third thanks to RBIs by Hoeg, Ben Norman, Mitchell Boe, and Mason McCoy, the Terrapins came storming back with 2-run and 3-run homers in consecutive innings.
Maryland had a 1-run lead heading into the fifth, but Robert Neustrom took matters into his own hands with a solo shot to deep center field.
From that point on, Maryland never led again. It got close, though, as the Terrapins tied the score in the seventh with a Marty Costes home run after Chris Whelan blasted a solo dinger.
After a rare underwhelming start from ace Gallagher, the Hawkeye pitching staff bounced back, and Kyle Shimp and Josh Martsching each had very respectable outings.
Gallagher gave up 8 earned runs on 14 hits in six innings, but Shimp and Martsching gave up just 1 hit and no runs in three innings.
In his time on the mound, Martsching was as clutch as one can get. The senior got Iowa out of a bases-loaded jam with one out and struck out the final two batters to slam the door on the Terrapins.
“For me, I want to be in those situations,” Martsching said. “You just gotta trust your defense. It’s a little luck sometimes, getting out of them, but we got out of it.”
The Hawkeyes have been tested in tight games many times before the tournament. The experience in those intense games gave Iowa an edge in a crucial tournament game against one of the best teams in the conference.
“The way this second half of the season went for us, I knew that our guys would find a way to come back,” head coach Rick Heller said. “They always do. We’ve had a bunch of them down the stretch where we had to come back from big deficits and find a way to win, and they did it again today.”
Iowa will continue its Big Ten tournament run on May 26, when it takes on No. 1 seed Nebraska at 9 a.m.
