TERRE HAUTE, Indiana – The University of Iowa baseball team defeated North Carolina, 6-5, in 13 innings before falling to Indiana State, 11-8, in the Terre Haute Regional Final on Sunday night at Bob Warn Field.
“We fought until the end,” said Heller. “That really shows the character of this team. We all really believed that we were going to find a way to score more runs tonight regardless of what happened.”
The Hawkeyes needed extras to dispatch the Tar Heels as Ty Langenberg got the start in game one. Langenberg threw seven innings allowing four runs and striking out six. Will Christophersen earned the win throwing 4 2/3 innings of relief without allowing a hit.
Brennen Dorighi was 4-for-5 with three RBIs and Raider Tello was 2-for-4 with an RBI. Michael Seegers had the game winning RBI triple in the 13th inning, and Kyle Huckstorf also added an RBI in the first game of the day.
Zach Voelker got the start for Iowa in game two throwing 3 1/3 innings while allowing four earned runs. Five other pitchers saw action for the Hawkeyes in a bullpen game. The Iowa pitchers combined to allow 16 free passes, walking six and hitting 10.
“We just had to keep playing and trying to find a way,” said head coach Rick Heller. “With our pitchers that were going into the game that hadn’t been there in a while, we told them to take a deep breath, take it one pitch at a time, and try to pound the strike zone. If we were going to down, we wanted them to hit it, and unfortunately that wasn’t the case. We saw flashes of it throughout, but it wasn’t enough. We gave them too many free bases that created jams that we weren’t able to work out of all of the time.”
In the second contest Dorighi was 2-for-5 with three RBIs, and Michael Seegers went 3-for-5. Dorighi hit a home run along with Blake Guerin and Brayden Frazier. Raider Tello was 3-for-5 with an RBI at the plate.
“We have a ton of guys back off of this team,” said Heller. “We have a chance to be pretty special next year.”
OF NOTE
- The Hawkeyes tied the program single season win record with 44 wins on the season. They finish the season with a 44-15 record.
- Iowa set single season records in three categories. Iowa pitchers set the single season record for strikeouts with 630. Iowa batters set program records in walks with 326 and hit by pitches with 105.
- This was Iowa’s second Regional Final appearance in program history.
- Iowa outhit the Sycamores for the second straight game. This is only the fourth time this season that Iowa has lost while outhitting its opponents (42-4).
- This was only the third time that Iowa lost while scoring five or more runs this season (44-3).