BB: IIAC: Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[Floyd in Iowa City]

Loras won 12-8 tonight against the Rams.  Cornell tied the game up at 7-7 in the 7th, but Loras scored 5 in the 8th.  Like the midweek game against Dubuque, the Loras bats continue to score tons of runs as they have now won 11 of their last 12 games.  They have scored 117 runs in those 12 games.

Cornell tonight threw the best starting pitcher they have statistically in Casey Korn, so the Rams are going to need some luck to get one or two games tomorrow.

Loras will be throwing Austin Safranski (7-0 record) and maybe even Kyler Laurie (8-1 record).

When was the last time someone got hot at the end of the season like this to come out of the middle of the standings to potentially win the conference title?

The Duhawks scored 27 runs today, so the bats got it done.  Cornell did not really get any pitching, but those Ram players are always going to remember scoring 10 in the 7th to steal that game.

[wartburgalum]

Disappointing season for the Knights.  They did not play the kind of baseball that conference champs play, especially in the home stretch of the season.  Congrats to Loras and Luther (man that hurts to say) for their very successful seasons. Hopefully Wartburg can make a run through the tourny and play their way into a regional birth.

[Floyd in Iowa City]

http://www.gazetteonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090505/SPORTS/705059873/1008

Another article on the horrible situation at UNI.  They have cut so many men's sports in recent years, and now they drop the 103-year old baseball program.  This is not the athletic department that I remember from the late 1980s when Eldon Miller, Terry Allen, Dr. Victory, and others were around.

There will be one struggling Division I baseball program left in Iowa next year.  There will still be four Division I softball programs.

[wartburgalum]

Baseball is in a bad way in the state of Iowa.  Now with only 1 DI program left the opportunities for the upper tier players from the state of Iowa have even fewer options (Ju-Co, out of state, or play at a lower level). 

[BigPoppa]

Baseball is in a bad way in the state of Iowa.  Now with only 1 DI program left the opportunities for the upper tier players from the state of Iowa have even fewer options (Ju-Co, out of state, or play at a lower level). 

That is actually good news for the D3 programs. I know whn University of WI dropped their baseball program in 1991, many D3s got kickback players from Wisconsin and had great teams as a result.

[Floyd in Iowa City]

How has the Badgers dropping baseball 20 years ago changed the high school game in that state?  Is high school baseball in Wisconsin in the same place that it was back then?

I have always thought that high school wrestling in Iowa has fed off of some of the success that Gable had at Iowa.  The reason that there are so many good college wrestling programs is also because of how good Iowa high school wrestling has been, but when both have been successful I have thought that they feed off of each other a little.

Without the Division I chances for potential players or programs for fans to follow, how many families are going to be playing lots of baseball when the kids are like 5-10 years old.  Iowa also does not have that Major League team for people to follow (although there are enough Cubs fans to go around), so I just worry about baseball taking even more of a back seat to other sports like football and wrestling (as examples) where families follow the state universities in person and on TV.

I like football and wrestling a lot, but I want baseball to stay popular as well.

[youcantseemestill]

In all fairness Floyd, losing UNI does exactly nothing to the "viewership" of baseball in this state.  Its hard enough to take some of these programs seriously when the D3 schools in this state outdraw Iowa and UNI for home games.  I am as sad as anyone that we are going to lose the better of the two D1 baseball programs in this state, but it is not going to be a big deal once it is gone.  For example, there was a pretty decent initial outcry when ISU lost its program and now, 8 years later, no one cares.  Its a tough pill to swallow now, but in the grand scheme of things its not that big of a deal.

[youcantseemestill]

Predictions for the tourney???

[BigPoppa]

Predictions for the tourney???

I will stick with my pre-season prediction of Wartburg.

[baseballfans4life]

I'm a wartburg fan all the way.. but seems as the way things are going this year with injuries amoung other problems I just dont see them pulling it off.  I think coe is going to take it.

[wartburgalum]

Big Poppa- I initially was thinking along the same line as you with regards to the kickback that D3 programs could receive from diminishing DI programs in the state, but I just have a hard time believing that a DI recruit would be willing to pay upwards of $30,000 per year when they could go to a Juco and move on from there.  If anything this only benefits the Juco schools in the state and D1 and D2 schools in neighboring states.  Just my thoughts.

[wartburgalum]

Youcantseemestill-

I think that you may be off on your assessment of losing yet another baseball program in the state.  It is a big deal.  Iowa already has a difficult time keeping college grads (in all areas) in the state when they are done with school.  Now you are talking about the possible export of more Iowans to other states at an even earlier time.  I realize that we are probably only talking about 10-15 kids a year but it would be nice to see our state hold onto, what I consider, a valuable resource in our communities (baseball programs and young student athletes).

[Floyd in Iowa City]

In all fairness Floyd, losing UNI does exactly nothing to the "viewership" of baseball in this state.  Its hard enough to take some of these programs seriously when the D3 schools in this state outdraw Iowa and UNI for home games.  I am as sad as anyone that we are going to lose the better of the two D1 baseball programs in this state, but it is not going to be a big deal once it is gone.  For example, there was a pretty decent initial outcry when ISU lost its program and now, 8 years later, no one cares.  Its a tough pill to swallow now, but in the grand scheme of things its not that big of a deal.

I know what you are saying, but does UNI consistently draw that well for anything besides football, men's basketball, and maybe volleyball (I haven't been around the UNI campus much in the last few years)?

Growing up in NE Iowa, even if I wasn't going to that many college baseball games before junior high, I remember reading the Waterloo Courier to see how Iowa, UNI, and the Iowa Conference was doing in baseball, football, basketball, and wrestling.  Maybe all that it was for the most part was box scores and some notes in the news and notes section, but for a kid that loved sports and followed the Iowa Conference and state schools besides ISU, it was something.

Back in the pre-website days, I remember how big it was when the Big Ten or Iowa Conference standings were in the newspaper.  Maybe I would have loved baseball anyway, but I guess my point was that following the game as a kid meant something to me.  Iowa was better back then in baseball though, so perhaps that was part of it as well.

My son is about to enter elementary school next year.  It is sad that he is not going to have the same local opportunities that we had to play college baseball.  I am hopeful that we can afford to send him to an Iowa Conference school, but who knows what that will cost in a decade.

Baseball was the oldest sport UNI had.  People I know still talk about how ISU and Wisconsin dropped baseball.  I played with two guys that were on the Wisconsin team when the Big Ten school dropped the sport.  It may seem like no one cares because most people realize that dropped men's programs are not coming back at Division I.  It also may be that the popularity of college baseball in the Midwest is dropping even more, and that should bother anyone that follows the game.

I agree with wartburgalum that it might help non-Iowa state schools and JUCOs the most.  I did not grow up following the JUCO standings.

[Floyd in Iowa City]

Iowa Conference tourney scores so far:

Wartburg 12, BV 4

BV committed 7 errors and only had 3 hits themselves.  Wartburg pulled away in the 6th and 7th innings.  Martijn only gave up 3 hits to BV, but walked 7 guys.  However, he did get the win and is now 9-1.

Coe 10, Simpson 3

Coe jumped out of the gate with 8 runs in the first three innings.  They pounded out 16 hits as well for the game.  Nicholson kept Simpson at bay by giving up 6 hits and walking three.

Luther 3, Coe 2

Wartburg is up 1-0 in the 3rd.

[coocooforcoekohawk]

Looks like a great showing for IIAC Softball teams today.