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Big Ten Softball Tournament

Mar 14, 2003
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This is a single elimination tournament, all the teams qualify. I actually wish the baseball side would do something similar to this as I hate the six team format especially with the growth of the conference.

Iowa is the 9 seed and will face the 8 seed Ohio State at 2pm on Thursday. The winner will face 1 seed Michigan on Friday. The tournament is in Lincoln,NE. If I didn't have to work on Thursday, I might go catch the game. However, no way I can take any time off this week.
 
I'm not a fan of single elim for softball - too much weird stuff can happen in a single game, esp. 7 inning SB games. For example, last years senior-loaded UNI team won their conference going away, but got upset 1-0 in their tournament and sat home. Really unfair IMHO. Not that Michigan is in any danger, but plenty of teams have come through the lower bracket to win softball tournaments.
 
The Hawks cough up a 4-1 lead and lose 8-4 to OSU, a team we beat 8-0 in March. Massey loaded the bases, walked in two, then gave up a grand slam in the 5th inning. Ouch.

Looking ahead to next season, the biggest graduation losses will be Dowling and Lyon. I don't know anything about the incoming class next season, but I do know that Blank is the only impact player this staff has landed so far (Massey was a Blevins recruit). On one hand we return a lot of starters, but on the other those starters finished 9th in a conference that's a tier below the SEC, Pac12 & BXII. Don't have a good feeling at this point. :(
 
While Megan Blank was signed by Looper, she committed to Iowa when Blevins was the coach. Looper decided to honor Megan's previous committment to Iowa. While Megan is not a legacy recruit, she did have a lot of Iowa connections, given that Megan's Dad grew up in Iowa City and her Mom in Des Moines (before attending UI).
 
Thanks, did not know that. So make that zero impact recruits for this staff so far.
 
The Uof I showed they cared little about softball when they took months to name a head coach when Blevins retired. The Looper experiment has been less than impressive. She was supposed to be a great pitching coach and has not recruited a pitcher that is any better than a number of high school pitchers in state. Our pitching is not close to being good enough to be in championship talk. Stacey May Johnson is the only person on staff that should be retained and the rest should be let go. There are high school coaches in-state that would do a better job than what we have now. The leadership is a huge letdown from what we had with Blevins.
 
Administration took so long to hire someone because they were repeatedly turned down. Same happened with the last volleyball hire. So before you give up on Looper, realize the Administration doesn't have the ability to get anyone better.

That said, I like Looper. It's disappointing the season fell on pretty hard times, but the non-conference season was amazing and we're still at a 33 RPI. There's still a good chance we make postseason this year with that RPI. And even if we don't make the tournament, being just on the cusp of a tournament bid is not a terrible season.

Who knows what goes on in the heads of 18-22 year-old kids. Iowa was still good on the road during the B1G season, but was pretty horrible at home. Massey struggled at times, but she had a lot riding on her shoulders with the rest of the pitching staff really (I mean really) struggling.

Looper figured out that Dowling should be slapping and that Blank should not be slapping. I think she's got a very good softball mind. And from what I hear, the players really like the entire staff and the team really gets along...which wasn't the case at the end of the Blevins era. Stay possitive softball fans and let's give her a few more years / recrutiing classes!
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I think Looper has a difficult time of determining when to swap out the pitchers. When you look back over the last few weeks there are quite a few games when we lost a game and had one really big inning (Illinois, PSU and OSU come to mind). In each of the games the momentum appeared to be turning and I think Looper waited to long to make a switch. Also, she has appeared to make really bad base coaching decisions here and there.

In softball most of the blue chip players verbal as freshman and sophomores so the first couple recruiting classes the best players were likely committed, so this class I think will be really telling.

Someone above mentioned that they think May-Johnson should be retained and the rest of the staff let go. I'm not there yet, but I'm getting closer to agreeing with that. Coach M-J has done a great job turning Blank into a slapper/bunter into one of the best hitters in Iowa history. Moving Dowling to a slapper was brilliant.

I agree with LinusPF that our RPI may get us into the tournament, but at this point I do not think we are worthy.
 
No NCAA tourney for Iowa.....Minnesota's Alister and Wisconsin's Healey were hired at the same time as Looper. Alister and Healy had less talent but were in the championship of the B1G tourney and are in the big dance. Looper is not cutting it at Iowa.
 
Originally posted by HawkeyeSoftballFan:

No NCAA tourney for Iowa.....Minnesota's Alister and Wisconsin's Healey were hired at the same time as Looper. Alister and Healy had less talent but were in the championship of the B1G tourney and are in the big dance. Looper is not cutting it at Iowa.
You might see a change in 5 years
 
Don't get me wrong, coaches and players need to do a lot of self-examination about what when wrong during the B10 season. But if Massey doesn't lose it while holding a 4-1 lead over OSU in the 5th inning, Iowa almost certainly gets into the NCAA tournament anyway.

Coach Looper started last season batting Massey, then stopped, and she finished with an ERA round 2. This season, the dilemma was how to get more offense, and the decision was made to put her bat back in the lineup. But her pitching suffered; so what to do next season?

Not to put all the blame on KM; Lyon was ineffective for much of the season, and last I checked we had the 2nd most errors in the conference.
 
This is what I don't understand, Cassandra Darrah, Wisconsin's pitcher is from Iowa, why didn't Iowa recruite her? She was the MVP of the Big Ten Tournament.
 
Lyon threw well for the first half the season, but she struggled about the time we went into a nose dive.

We're going to miss Dowling and Wall next season. Could be a long year.
 
Whether it's Iowa softball or baseball. If they have 30 wins and a winning record they are safe as a coach regardless if they make it to the NCAA tournament or not.
 
Originally posted by LinusPF:


Administration took so long to hire someone because they were repeatedly turned down. Same happened with the last volleyball hire. So before you give up on Looper, realize the Administration doesn't have the ability to get anyone better.

That said, I like Looper. It's disappointing the season fell on pretty hard times, but the non-conference season was amazing and we're still at a 33 RPI. There's still a good chance we make postseason this year with that RPI. And even if we don't make the tournament, being just on the cusp of a tournament bid is not a terrible season.

Who knows what goes on in the heads of 18-22 year-old kids. Iowa was still good on the road during the B1G season, but was pretty horrible at home. Massey struggled at times, but she had a lot riding on her shoulders with the rest of the pitching staff really (I mean really) struggling.

Looper figured out that Dowling should be slapping and that Blank should not be slapping. I think she's got a very good softball mind. And from what I hear, the players really like the entire staff and the team really gets along...which wasn't the case at the end of the Blevins era. Stay possitive softball fans and let's give her a few more years / recrutiing classes!
smile.r191677.gif
This. By all acounts, Looper was the 5th option at best. The way Blevins was somewhat shown the door did not sit well with many of her peers in the college coaching community.
 
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