Weekend Recap with Rick Heller: South Florida Series

Iowa Baseball is back and so is our weekly recap with Head Coach Rick Heller. The Hawkeyes opened the 2025 campaign with a trip to Tampa for a three-game series against South Florida. Iowa held leads all three games, but only came away with one victory on the weekend.

Up next, the Hawkeyes will head back south for the Stetson Tournament. They will face Notre Dame on Friday, host Stetson on Saturday and finish up the weekend with UMBC on Sunday. HawkeyeReport caught up with head coach Rick Heller to go over the top takeaways from the weekend in Tampa.

Main Takeaway: The starting pitching yielded very encouraging opening weekend results

Despite finishing the opening weekend with a 1-2 record, the Hawkeyes’ starting rotation delivered some highly encouraging performances. After amassing just two weekends where the starting rotation combined for 15.0+ innings last season, they’re halfway to that total through week one.

Both Cade Obermueller and Aaron Savary ran into trouble in the first inning of their starts, but were able to work out of it, delivering mostly efficient outings. Obermueller went 5.0 innings, allowing one unearned run on one hit, including ten strikeouts to two walks. As for Savary, he completed 6.0 innings, allowing two runs on two hits, including ten strikeouts to two walks. In order to get deep into the game as a starter you have to limit your pitch count. Obermueller averaged 17.6 pitches per inning, while Savary averaged 15.0 per inning. Both are an improvement on last year’s numbers and provide a good starting point to build on going forward.

“Cade and Aaron being able to fight through and minimize in both of their first innings was a good sign,” said head coach Rick Heller. “Watching the first inning unveil on Friday and Saturday, you could have seen us going to the bullpen in the second or third inning. To see them fight through it and log five plus innings and be very efficient was outstanding.”

Reece Beuter wasn’t quite as sharp on Sunday, allowing a pair of solo home runs, but was able to throw strikes and limit damage. He allowed two runs on five hits over 4.0 innings, including three strikeouts to no walks.

Overall, the three starters combined to throw 156 of their 248 (62.9%) pitches for strikes. Although a small sample size, 1.53 strikeouts to 0.27 walks per inning is a really encouraging start to the year.

“It’s obviously been high focus from the group, not just those guys, but to see those guys go out and execute, it was a great sign that what they’ve been working towards and working on was actually successful.”

Again, it’s early, but if the coaching staff can rely on the starting rotation to consistently total 15.0+ innings per weekend, it will take a considerable amount of pressure off of the bullpen arms.

Three more thoughts on the Hawkeyes series against South Florida…

1. The bullpen had some mixed results

Given the struggles of the Hawkeyes bullpen last season, it’s no surprise that this group faced the most scrutiny from the fanbase during the opening weekend. It was a mixed bag of results, with some good and some bad, but whatever way you slice it, they still get tagged with blowing leads in both losses.

“(The bullpen) has to improve and there were some good ones,” said Heller. “You just can’t walk guys late in the game and expect to have a chance to win.”

Let’s start with what we saw that was encouraging.

Former Kirkwood CC transfer Ganon Archer was a guy that Rick Heller mentioned as someone that really made progress over the offseason, and he was as advertised. In Iowa’s 8-2 win on Saturday, Archer tossed 3.0 scoreless innings, including three strikeouts to no walks and just one hit allowed. He threw 26 of his 37 (70.1%) pitches for strikes. Brant Hogue had a solid outing on Friday, striking out two hitters in one inning of work, while Houston transfer Daniel Wright tossed a scoreless inning on Sunday with a pair of K’s.

For the weekend, the bullpen allowed nine runs on 11 hits over 10.0 innings. They threw 129 of 212 (60.8%) pitches for strikes, but still gave up nine walks. For Coach Rick Heller, the loss on Friday was the tougher one to handle, as the pitching staff allowed just three hits, but still suffered a season-opening defeat.

“You give up three hits and lose, it’s just a tough, tough way to lose in game one and you wish you could go back and rewrite that one because that was big swing in the series.”

Anthony Watts retired five of the first six hitters he faced in relief, but he didn’t get the call on a 3-2 pitch with two outs and things unraveled from there. He walked the ensuing batter and then hung a 1-2 slider that Ryan Pruitt hit out of the park for a grand slam to give USF a 5-2 lead.

“That call didn’t go his way and that led to the grand slam. That was tough, but ultimately that was on Anthony. He put himself in that spot and definitely will be better and needs to be better in that situation.”

It’s too early to start making assumptions that this year’s bullpen will have the same struggles as last season, but they have to be more consistent starting next weekend at the Stetson Tournament.

2. Transfers Miles Risley, Daniel Rogers, and Jackson Beaman wasted no time making a significant impact at the plate

How quickly the new faces on the roster, especially on the position player side, would make an impact was one of the biggest preseason questions. Transfers Miles Risley, Daniel Rogers, and Jackson Beaman immediately made their presence known, contributing significantly throughout the weekend. Those three combined to bat 10/31 (.323), with a .417 on-base percentage, including four home runs and nine RBI’s.

“I thought they had a great weekend and were some of the key guys to our offense all weekend long,” said Heller. “Jaixen Frost scored three runs on Friday night. Caleb Wulf had a good weekend and a lot of those guys that were new, they did a great job.”

“It’s really important and it shows that the training we’ve been doing is working and that they can go out and perform at a high level against the pitching we’re going to see week in, week out. It was a big boost for their overall confidence, and to have (that impact) in week one is a bonus.”

The depth of the Hawkeyes offense depends on what contributions they get from the new faces on the roster. For the most part, those new bats in the lineup produced, and if they can continue to do that going forward, Iowa should end up having a pretty solid offense.

3. Offense missed some opportunities but still produced solid results

With some of the preseason questions that were present regarding the Iowa offense, putting up 17 runs on 30 hits during the first weekend of the season was a pretty encouraging sign. It’s also fair to mention that they missed quite a few opportunities to plate more runs and that could have been enough to make up for some of the runs allowed by the bullpen. Rick Heller was happy with their overall production, but agreed that they let USF off the hook on multiple occasions.

“The offense wasn’t really the problem. I was really pleased with the overall team offense,” said Heller. “There’s things we need to do better and things that I believe we will do better, but ultimately, it came down to missed opportunities.”

The Hawkeyes were very good without runners in scoring position, batting .325, with a .402 on-base percentage, but their production with runners on base and two outs was lacking. On the weekend, Iowa left 28 runners on base, batting .167 (5/30) with runners in scoring position and .188 (6/32) with two outs. Heller was critical of Andy Nelson and Reese Moore who combined for a .125 (2/16) average and .222 on-base percentage with runners on base. In Sunday’s 9-5 loss, Nelson and Moore were 0/6 with six strikeouts with runners on base.

“Nelson and Moore had rough weekends and they kept coming up in those situations and didn’t get the job done, especially in Sunday’s game, there were opportunities to blow that game out in the first five, six innings and those guys were in the position where they needed to do something.”

“If Andy or Reese get a double, or even a single a couple of those times, it’s completely different, but they just have to wipe it away and move on…If we’re going to be very successful offensively, they have to be productive.”

FINAL THOUGHT

The margins are slim in baseball and the Hawkeyes saw that firsthand in Tampa over the weekend, but as slim as the margins are on the field, the difference between a 2-1 weekend and a 1-2 weekend is pretty large.

Overall, I thought Iowa played better than their 1-2 record indicates. Although they left some runs out there, the overall performance by the offense was enough to give you a good feeling going forward, especially with some of the production they got from the new faces. As for the pitching staff, the starting rotation did what they needed to do to give the Hawkeyes a chance to win. The bullpen must show some improvement from week one to week two, or nerves will start to fray quickly as memories of last season resurface.