2014 Softball
- Thread starter LinusPF
- Start date
Want Iowa in tournament = Should have kept Blevins! I find it a damn shame this new coach won't recruit Iowa kids. Blevins would win 40 games with hard working home-grown kids!
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Went 2-2 in the opening tournament in South Carolina. Should have been 3-1 worst case in my opinion. They head to Waco, TX, this week and will play both Baylor and UAB which will be tough games, but should win the remaining three games there. Then they go out to Tuscon for a tournament with four teams including Arizona. They have a good shot to win 3 of those 4. They have a 3-game series at Texas and at Mississippi State and a 2-game series with Missouri as well. I'll give Looper credit, she has not shied away from scheduling tough in the non-conference. We either walk into the B1G season with some big scalps on the board and a nice NCAA resume, or we will need to win the B1G Championship in order to make the NCAAs. We don't play Michigan in the regular season which will at least halp the win/loss record.
Barta obviously thinks highly of Marla. He signed her to a nice contract extension after posting what would hardly be considered stellar seasons and put her on the search committee for the baseball coach. I'm still trying to figure out why we ran off Gayle Blevins to replace her with Looper.
Some of the younger players played well this weekend. Erickson hit over .400 and Gyerman, Navarro and Repole all had some big hits. Blank and Massey got their hits too. Tough weekend ahead. UAB, Baylor and Lipscomb all have good teams. Drake and ECU are not bad either.
Losing to SC was tough....you can't waste a lead off double to start the game.
Anyone know why Luna only played the first game?
Losing to SC was tough....you can't waste a lead off double to start the game.
Anyone know why Luna only played the first game?
From what I could follow on the old Hawkeye Hideout, there was allegedly a player revolt directed against one of the asst. coaches. Upon looking into the matter, Barta asked Blevins to terminate the coach, who refused. To be fair, Blevin's last few seasons were not productive.
Iowa softball lost to UAB 6-1 in 9 innings, hopefully they can salvage the weekend with an upset win over Baylor who is a Top 15 team.
Iowa softball loses to Baylor 2-0, they are 0-4 on this trip. They will face Drake at 9am on Sunday before having a three game series @ Mississippi State next weekend.
Obviously I have not seen the Hawks play yet this year but anyone with some knowledge of returning players could tell you we do not have the pitching to challenge for the BIG championship or for an NCAA tournament berth. Massey is our only pitcher close to being capable of beating a good team and she is not as good as most other teams best pitcher. It also appears from the first 8 games we have other weaknesses besides pitching. Maybe Looper will turn this around but I don't think it will happen. It is mind boggling that she got an extension after last season. I'm afraid that softball will go the way of the volleyball program, at least before the hire of the new volleyball coach. I am not a big fan of title IX but at least Christine Grant had the best interests of women's athletics in the forefront of the AD's office. Either Barta doesn't know enough about women's sports or doesn't care.
Just watched Barta's appearance on the Iowa Press program on IPTV where he categorically stated that his goal for every single program is not only a BIG championship, but a national championship.
The guy is an absolute freaking joke of an AD, and if he's allowed to make the next football hire we might as well bulldoze Kinnck Stadium and give the land to the hospital because at least they'll be able to do something productive with it.
I was at all five softball games this weekend. Here is my two cents....
We should have beaten UAB and Mizzou. Both would have been huge wins. In the Mizzou game Looper called for a squeeze in extras with runners on 2nd and 3rd with one out where we did not score. What is confusing is the batter had been making good contact all weekend. With the defense in a hard groundball gets through. With the outfielders in the long fly balls she had been hitting all weekend would have cleared the defense. The squeeze was not executed and we did not score. Dumb decision to call a squeeze with a 2-0 count and a hot batter at the plate.
Against UAB two running errors really hurt us. Looper is a poor base coach. We have run ourselves out of three games this year (S Carolina, UAB and Mizzou). We also got a bad break on UAB's homer. The ball was in the right fielders glove but she hit the wall and dropped the ball over the fence. With that being said a base running blunder really hurt is.
We are hitting fairly well actually (we outhit Lipscomb who beat us 10-0 and everyone else this weekend) but are not getting timely hits. We had lead-off runners on 2nd base twice verses Baylor and could not score them either time.
Massey pitched well this weekend giving up two earned runs in 20 innings. Both were off of walks where she got balls called on pitches that looked good. The other two looked good at times and not so much at times.
Freshmen Fritch and Navarro looked good. Fritsch made some very nice defensive plays as did Navarro at first. Fritsch is hitting over .400 now and is speedy. Erickson and Repole are hitting well too.
I think we have the potential to have a decent season but it wouldn't surprise me to see us totally collapse either.
We should have beaten UAB and Mizzou. Both would have been huge wins. In the Mizzou game Looper called for a squeeze in extras with runners on 2nd and 3rd with one out where we did not score. What is confusing is the batter had been making good contact all weekend. With the defense in a hard groundball gets through. With the outfielders in the long fly balls she had been hitting all weekend would have cleared the defense. The squeeze was not executed and we did not score. Dumb decision to call a squeeze with a 2-0 count and a hot batter at the plate.
Against UAB two running errors really hurt us. Looper is a poor base coach. We have run ourselves out of three games this year (S Carolina, UAB and Mizzou). We also got a bad break on UAB's homer. The ball was in the right fielders glove but she hit the wall and dropped the ball over the fence. With that being said a base running blunder really hurt is.
We are hitting fairly well actually (we outhit Lipscomb who beat us 10-0 and everyone else this weekend) but are not getting timely hits. We had lead-off runners on 2nd base twice verses Baylor and could not score them either time.
Massey pitched well this weekend giving up two earned runs in 20 innings. Both were off of walks where she got balls called on pitches that looked good. The other two looked good at times and not so much at times.
Freshmen Fritch and Navarro looked good. Fritsch made some very nice defensive plays as did Navarro at first. Fritsch is hitting over .400 now and is speedy. Erickson and Repole are hitting well too.
I think we have the potential to have a decent season but it wouldn't surprise me to see us totally collapse either.
Ya, I saw that as well. Cut him some slack becasue part of that comment is PR, let's rally the troops kind of stuff. If he truely believes that, then we have some reality checks that need to take place. I think we only have 3 sports on campus right now that have all three pieces of the puzzle in place to win B1G Championships on a consistant basis. That's out of 22 sports total.
The word I got from fairly reliable sources is that some player(s) were upset with Blevins and were using an assistant coach as a sounding board and it appeared he was undermining the head coach. Evidently one or more players were threatening to transfer because of differences with Blevins. What happened after that I have no information on other than Blevins ended up resigning.
My personal guess is that because Blevins was about getting down to business and paying attention to detail and expected a lot from her players that some had trouble not being babied like they were in high school. I think Blevins looked at the roster and said I don't want to coach these guys anymore and being close to retirement age decided to hang it up.
Iowa was swept by Mississippi State today losing 9-1 in 5 innings. Iowa is now 3-9 and will go to Tucson,Arizona next weekend for four games against Valparaiso, Arizona, UT-Arlington, and Longwood.
Wow. Safe to call the non-con part of the schedule a disaster. Two years ago we also piled up a bunch of losses in non-con but went on to finish 2nd in the B10, but Massey's ERA was about a run lower and Lyons almost that good. So far does not look like we have a #2 pitcher worthy of the title, WTF will happen after Massey graduates??
Anything can happen, but there appears to be some real problems on this team. Marginal pitching so far and no bats to speak of is not a formula for winning many softball games. The good thing is that outside of the Big-3(Michigan, Nebraska, Minnesota) the rest of the B1G is not steller by any means. So who knows. Right now I think we will most likely enter B1G play with only 5-6 wins on the record maximum.
I'm trying very hard to continue keeping an open mind about Looper, but it is getting harder and harder each week.
Like I have said earlier, I will let the season play out before judging Looper but the way it has started does not seem promising. Also, regardless of what happens this year Looper has to recruit a top notch pitcher for next year or it will be a disaster. The two that would be returning next year are not the answer for the #1spot.
First off I love all the great posts in the 2 threads on here about Hawkeye softball. I know the pitcher in my daughters class is very highly thought of in the travel ball circuits. In my opinion Iowa has everything a recruit and their family could ever want and I hope people get the chance to see it.
Thanks Crankermo. Iowa does have a very good fan base for softball. We do have the facilities, coaches, university to have a successful softball program here. We were "this close" last year and have enough talent to right the ship this year.
Mizzou has a great team. I got to watch them in Waco. Stangle will be a great pitcher for y'all.
This post was edited on 2/24 6:57 PM by LinusPF
Mizzou has a great team. I got to watch them in Waco. Stangle will be a great pitcher for y'all.
This post was edited on 2/24 6:57 PM by LinusPF
There is pitcher from Florida in next year's class. Koral Smith. I have not been able to find out much about her other than a few compliments on Ultimate College Softball. The class afterwards has Erin Riding from Texas. I've heard very good things about her.
We missed out on not landing Paige Lowery from Dallas Center-Grimes. She's going to Mizzou and will be an impact pitcher.
Whitney has thrown some good innings, but needs to eliminate the walks.
We missed out on not landing Paige Lowery from Dallas Center-Grimes. She's going to Mizzou and will be an impact pitcher.
Whitney has thrown some good innings, but needs to eliminate the walks.
Iowa softball only played 2/4 games this past weekend. They beat Valpo on Friday by the score of 8-0 and lost to Longwood today by the score of 4-1. They are 4-10 on the season and have a three game series @ Texas coming up, followed by a midweek game against Texas State. Then B1G play opens @ Illinois.
