Everything Rick Heller said after Iowa’s tournament-opening win over North Carolina

“Yeah, I mean, we were going back and forth on what to do in the ninth. When the score was 3-1, we felt like, you know, you had to go to your closer at that point and not try to milk another inning out of Jack Whitlock. But, when we scored two, I was sitting there thinking maybe we try or give him a base runner before we bring Will in. And Will had been up for three innings and I really think that that probably was the reason that he wasn’t as sharp as he was the last month or so tonight.

“But, I never felt at any time Will had lost his confidence. I felt like he was throwing his pitches with intent. He was just kind of overthrowing or overcooking things tonight, which he hadn’t done in a long, long time. He had just been powering the zone with all of his pitches. You know, he had the hitter 0-2 to start the inning and then for whatever reason did too much and that started things rolling and Osuna hit the home run on a hanging slider. It was going quick.

“The good thing was I had told Luke Llewellyn before the inning started to make sure that he was dialed in and kept his head in the game, that Will had been up three times. Just in case something happened, he had to be ready to go. He had been activating, had been getting his body ready to go. I tried to keep him in the mindset that there was a legitimate chance that he would come into the game and he handled it extremely well,” Heller said.