It was a windy day at Duane Banks Field and the Hawkeyes made a late inning rally, but fell short on Saturday afternoon against Maryland, 8-6.

The Terps got another solid start from their starter, this time it was Nick Dean.

Drew Irvine was on the mound for the Hawkeyes, and it was just not his day. Irvine walked the first two batters of the game and Benjamin Cowles made it hurt, with a three-run home run to start the scoring early, 3-0. The Terps added another run in the fourth inning on a Matthew Shaw RBI single, scoring Chris Alleyne, who started the inning with a double. Irvine went just 3 innings, allowing four runs on five hits, while walking six. Coach Heller commented on Irvine’s performance saying, “Irvine had been absolutely dealing in his last three starts and nobody saw that one coming today.”

Nick Dean struck out five through five innings and scattered five Iowa base runners, but the Hawks battled back in the sixth inning. “Dean did a really nice job…he just pounded the zone with three pitches, had a really good changeup,” said Coach Heller on the performance of the Terps starter. With two runners on and two outs, Dylan Nedved would flip a fly ball into short right field for a double. The hit would score Williams and Martin, to cut the Maryland lead to 4-3. Matthew Sosa would follow with a hotshot groundball that got into the right center field gap. Nedved would come around to score and the lead was cut to 4-3.

Iowa reliever Jacob Henderson was solid on the mound going two innings behind Drew Irvine, before giving way to Ben Beutel. Coach Heller was happy with what he saw from Henderson saying, “I thought Jacob did a great job for us, he settled the game down…gave us two quality innings.” Maryland would answer the Iowa sixth inning rally with a rally of their own, scoring four runs. Tommy Gardiner and Tucker Flint would get back-to-back hits off Beutel with runners on, to plate two runs and extend the lead back to 6-3. Later in the inning, with Ben Probst on the mound, Matthew Shaw would get his third hit of the game and plate two more runs with a single.

The Hawkeyes were down, but not out of it and they continued to fight. In the eighth inning, Dylan Nedved would get his second RBI hit of the day, this one a single, scoring Peyton Williams. Matthew Sosa would follow with an RBI single of his own, but the inning would end with just two runs scored. Heading to the ninth, Iowa trailed 8-5.

Jack Guzek was another bright spot for the Hawkeyes out of the bullpen, as he went two innings and retired all six batters he faced, in the eighth and ninth inning. The bottom of the ninth got off to a great start with Brendan Sher and Ben Norman drawing walks off Sam Bello. Izaya Fullard followed with a bomb into the left center gap, but the wind knocked it down and CF Chris Alleyne made a sliding play to rob Fullard. Peyton Williams would knock in a run, to cut it to 8-6, with a sacrifice fly, but Austin Martin would fly out to deep center field to end the game.

The Hawkeyes have had back-to-back rough outings from their starters, so splitting the two games vs Maryland is something you take and move on to Northwestern. “You flush it and move on, that’s all you can do…If we want to reach all the goals, we set for ourselves in August…we need to be more consistent, we need to be better,” said Coach Heller on moving forward past today’s loss.

The Iowa Hawkeyes are now 16-11 on the season with two games remaining on the weekend. As long as Iowa takes the two games vs Northwestern, they should still be safely in the NCAA Tournament projection heading into next week.

Notes

- Ben Norman has extended his on base streak to 15 games

- Four of Maryland’s eight runs got on base via walks

- Iowa is now 2-10 when the opponent scores first

- Iowa has won the season series vs Maryland, three games to one