“I’m calling both games” is a famous line that the incomparable Kevin Harlan said during Week 17 of the 2019 NFL season, as he gave play-by-play commentary for the Chargers-Chiefs game in front of him and the Dolphins-Patriots game on another screen.
“I’m calling both games” is also the rationale I gave to my professors on why I skipped both of my classes on Tuesday, February 17th.
I blame the baseball team.
See, it was only supposed to be basketball. Iowa vs Nebraska, 8 pm. Well after both classes would have ended for the day.
The baseball home opener was supposed to be a week later on February 24th, but they saw an opportunity to fit a game in between their season opening tournament in Arizona and their first weekend series against Florida Atlantic. That’s how Division III UW-Platteville found themselves in Iowa City for what would turn out to be a historic beatdown.
Of course, we didn’t know that going in. The Hawkeyes lost three midweek games last season and had just allowed 13 runs to Northeastern on Sunday, so we figured the final score might end up something like 13-5 Iowa.
With first pitch at 3:00 pm, five hours before tip-off for basketball, we jumped at the opportunity to be there and were rewarded with 50 degree weather.
That’s important because all KRUI baseball games are called outdoors. Color commentator Logan Melia and I were planning to call the February 24th game regardless of the weather, so we really lucked out.
“God, the pop of the mitt, Ryan. I’m tickled to be back,” Logan said after the first pitch.
Four innings later, with the score 17-0 in favor of Iowa, his enthusiasm had dampened, as had his nose, which was running relentlessly.
“Once your team scores the 22nd run, you start thinking: ‘let’s wrap it up’. It gets to a point where you pretty much know what team’s going to win and that point was reached probably about three hours before the end of the game,” Logan said later that day.
Morale dropped to mutinous levels after the seventh inning concluded and Iowa was up 27-3, when the usual 10 run mercy rule was not applied.
At that point, the sky had undergone a transition from light gray to baby blue to orange and pink and purple before the sun finally disappeared for good. Without it, the wind that had been chilly all game became a polar vortex.
When I turned to Logan and said “sounds like we’re playing two more”, his agonized response was a sign that we had seen enough and should head across the street to Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
Overall impressions from the baseball team: don’t go to a game if you have something else to do later in the day. There will be a lot of runs scored at the Banks this year.
Next, we met up with Cole Krueger, who I would be calling basketball with.
At the start of the season, nobody thought never-won-a-march-madness-game Nebraska would be ranked top 10 in the country in late February. But as the Huskers kept winning and Iowa hung around in the standings, it quickly shaped up to become the biggest game of the year so far for the Hawkeyes.
And man did they need this one. We’d been saying they were going to get one of the two home games against Purdue and Nebraska, though last Saturday’s demoralizing 78-57 loss to the Boilermakers cast some doubt on that theory.
Where Nebraska had wins over highly ranked Illinois and Michigan State teams, Iowa was a team without a signature result on the season. They’d had chances, like having halftime leads against Iowa State and Purdue on the road, but had never capitalized. Worse, they had been struggling recently, with a bad road loss to Maryland and the aforementioned blowout at home to Purdue.
Their most impressive game this season might have been outlasting a fiery USC team at the end of January, which was a game they were always supposed to win anyway.
But something flipped in this one, as the Hawks defensive intensity, coupled with a vicious crowd, frustrated the Huskers all night.
Head coach Ben McCollum has made a point to thank the fans after every game and let them know how important they are to the team. Although attendance has been up this year compared to last, I had yet to see a student section as packed as it was for this one. Filled in from top to bottom, clad in black. A healthy amount of Nebraska fans in red and white were scattered throughout the stands as well.
Pretty quickly, it became apparent that this was going to be the opposite of the baseball game earlier. Blowout vs nailbiter. Scoring at will vs a defensive slog. Can you believe that Iowa baseball scored more runs than either basketball team had at halftime?
Cole kept saying how it felt like Iowa could have been up 10, but both teams struggled from three all night. And in the second half, things began to get chippy. Multiple players went down away from the play, always without a whistle.
Down the stretch, as had been the case all year, Bennett Stirtz made the difference. With six minutes to go, he went down hard after contacting Brayden Frager on a layup. Then after a break that gave him a chance to walk it off, Stirtz hit a sidestep three in Frayger’s face to give the Hawks a 50-45 lead.
With Iowa up two scores and under a minute to go, the fans began to make their way to the staircases.
Not to go up and beat traffic. Down to rush the court.
Iowa fans have been starving for a storming opportunity. Twice during the football season they lined up against Indiana and Oregon, and twice they were sent home empty handed, watching their team lose the lead in the final two minutes.
Some icy free throws from Cooper Koch and Tavion Banks made it official. An outpouring of black engulfed the court to celebrate the Hawks’ first signature win in the Ben McCollum era.
Then, we quickly signed off the air and went down to join in on the celebrations.
“I just feel so lucky to have been there to see that game,” Logan said.
“It was just like a monkey off the back feeling,” Cole added.
Even though the team’s March fate still hangs in the balance, this one will go a long way to help them realize it.
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