Iowa head coach Rick Heller wanted Cade Obermueller to settle in and not get rattled after giving up a run in the fourth inning.
Illinois had a bases loaded opportunity and Obermueller only walked in a run and nothing more. NBut in an elimination game in the Big Ten Tournament, every pitch counts offensively and defensively.
Heller said as long as his starting pitcher remained composed, they’d have a chance.
“Well, he needs to focus on the things he can control,” Heller said on the BTN broadcast during the top of the fifth inning. “He let some edge pitches that he didn’t get affect the last inning and you see the result. So hopefully, he goes out there and controls himself a little better and, you know, when that happens, you just have to overcome it, but we’re getting up there in his pitch count.
“Hopefully we get a clean one here. But you know, Anthony Watts will be ready to go if something happens.”
Obermueller got out clean through five innings of work, sans the run in the fourth. He went over 100 pitches as he finished the fifth frame.
As far as offense, Heller needed more from Iowa after going scoreless through four innings.
“We had some traffic and then you followed up with a couple bad at bats and he’s living on the edge of strike zone and we’ve caved in early in the count too many times,” Heller said. “We just got to be more disciplined and you know, have some better at bats when we do get some traffic going and we didn’t execute in the second inning. It’s gonna be a day when you definitely have to execute when you have those opportunities, and we haven’t to this point.”
It was tough for Heller and Iowa coming into Thursday. The Hawkeyes just lost to Michigan 3-2 in 10 innings Wednesday to fall to the elimination bracket.
“It just felt like we were off,” Heller said Wednesday. “That’s the best way I can describe it. We’re our best when we really can spit on pitches on the edges and spit on pitches out of the zone. We thrive on free bases that other teams give us and I thought we conceded early in the count at times. In the middle innings, we were swinging at pitches that were on the edges and getting ourselves out…I knew this was going to be a day that we had to take advantage of the opportunities we had and unfortunately that didn’t happen.”
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