The baseball team was swept by USC, while softball lost three of four games in the Christine Grant Classic.
The weather is beginning to warm up in the Midwest, but the Iowa baseball and softball teams are still stuck in the deep freeze.
Little was expected of both clubs this year, but as the year has wore on, the shine of the new season has slowly wilted to rust. Stacy May-Johnson's softball team has lost 10 of its last 11 games, while Rick Heller's baseball team has been swept in two of its last three conference series.
Didn't get a chance to catch the games this weekend? HawkeyeRoundtable has you covered. Keep reading to find out.
California Clunker
Rick Heller's baseball team already had their backs against the wall before even throwing the first ball of their weekend series. The 18-12 Hawkeyes were tasked with the difficult challenge of playing on the West Coast, and they had to do so against red-hot Southern California. The Trojans trailed Nebraska and UCLA in the standings and were desperate to stay within striking distance.
Needless to say, USC did just that.
The Trojans easily downed Iowa, 9-2, in the series opener. Iowa's Gable Mitchell did his best to give his team a chance - recording a 2-for-5, two-RBI outing on Saturday. His two-run shot in the fifth inning made it a 5-3 ballgame, but the USC bullpen held serve after that to secure a 6-3 win.
Any confidence the Hawkeyes had evaporated, and the Trojans finished off the sweep with an 8-2 victory on Sunday afternoon. The sweep dropped Iowa's record to 18-15 overall and 5-10 in Big Ten play. Twelve teams qualify for the 2026 Big Ten tournament, and the Hawkeyes would sneak in as the No. 12 seed if the season ended today.
UP NEXT: vs. Bradley on April 14 (6:02 pm, BTN+)
Washed Away
Softball entered its four-game, non-conference home stretch on a seven-game losing streak, but the rare opportunity to play out-of-conference on the weekend proved to be more harmful than good for the Hawkeyes.
Pitcher Serayah Neiss' complete game helped Iowa snap its seven-game skid with a 2-1 victory over Georgia Tech, but then the storms hit. Saturday called for a doubleheader - one game against the Yellow Jackets, followed by South Dakota State. The games did go on as scheduled, but not before a lengthy rain delay pushed the first game back to 4 p.m.
When the first contest finally took place, Georgia Tech downed Iowa 8-0. The Hawkeyes would get another crack at redemption against South Dakota State later that evening, but a go-ahead home run in extra innings was enough to carry the Jackrabbits to victory.
Sunday's finale against SDSU was a back-and-forth affair. The game appeared to be going in a a similar direction to the second Georgia Tech game, but the Hawkeyes fought back from a 4-1 deficit to tie things up at four in the fifth.
But as was the case against Iowa State on Wednesday, Iowa allowed three runs in the later innings and lost, 7-4.
“We’re learning to make adjustments, we’re learning to game plan for pitchers and we’re learning to deal with failure," May-Johnson told HawkeyeSports after the loss. "This was still a very good growth weekend; unfortunately, we don’t have as many wins as we would have liked to show for it.”
UP NEXT: vs. Indiana from April 17-19
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