Olympic sport wrap up — Field hockey makes Big Ten Tournament, soccer need a miracle

The Iowa field hockey team is back in the Big Ten tournament and will vye for the conference’s auto-bid into the NCAA tournament.

It was a good weekend for the Hawkeyes and it started off with a 7-1 win over Michigan State on Friday afternoon in East Lansing. Iowa was absolutely dominate, scoring three goals in the first half and another four in the second.

The Hawkeyes had 17 total shots (led by Katie Birch and Mya Christopher, who each had 3) with 14 of those on goal.

Six different Hawkeyes scored, led by Christopher who had two.

Iowa got to come home for its final game of the season against Ohio State, beating the Buckeyes 1-0 on Senior Day.

Freshman Maddy Murphy scored for the Hawks, tipping in a penalty shot Birch was taking. Iowa finishes the regular season 7-10 with a 3-5 mark in Big Ten play.

"We have a young team and we are finally starting to put it together,” Iowa head coach Lisa Cellucci said to HawkeyeSports. “In the last two weeks of practice we've had a great sense of urgency, focus, and great execution. I think that's what has carried over into our game plan."

The Big Ten Tournament is being held by Michigan State this season, so the Hawkeyes will be packing up and heading to East Lansing again for the quarterfinals on Sunday.

Iowa will play Penn State at 11 a.m. Central on Sunday morning. The Hawkeyes fell 3-0 to the Nittany Lions earlier this season in State College.

Here’s the entire bracket:

Soccer needs help to make Big Ten tournament

Iowa fell 3-0 at home to Wisconsin, putting its chance to make the conference tournament in serious jeopardy.

Per HawkeyeSports, Iowa needs to beat Illinois in its final regular season game this weekend and needs “losses from both Nebraska and Purdue. The Cornhuskers host Minnesota, while the Boilermakers host Maryland. Michigan (12 points) also must lose at Rutgers.”

That’s a tall order.

"It is a disappointing night, knowing what was at stake here, but I know we're going to find a resilience to bounce back and be ready for next week. It looked like one team played on Wednesday and for the other it was their first game this week. You can't be tired and mentally slow,” Iowa head coach Dave DiIanni said to HawkeyeSports after the Wisconsin loss. “You can't be 0-2 and unfortunately that's the way we were. I thought we were maybe going to push back a little bit in the second half but we gave up a couple really bad goals — something we haven't done in quite some time — and that was just too much to battle back."

This is what the table currently looks like:

It’s been nothing short of an up and down season for the Hawkeyes, who currently sit at 8-7-2 overall with a 3-5-2 mark in conference play.

Volleyball splits two-game homestand

The Iowa volleyball team fell to Illinois in five sets on Friday night before sweeping Northwestern the following day.

The Illini and Hawkeyes split the first four sets of the match, but Illinois was able to take the deciding set 16-14. Annika Olsen tied a career high with 29 digs and also registered 11 assists.

Against Northwestern, things went much better.

Iowa played three close sets — 25-23, 25-21, 25-18 — but Taylor Lewis was absolute money, tallying 11 kills, a .625 attack percentage, and added on four digs.

"I thought it was a great performance by our group. They really did a great job and battled on hard. It was a really good bounce-back after last night's loss to Illinois,” Iowa head coach Bond Shymansky said to HawkeyeSports. “Taylor Louis did a great job. I thought she took advantage of the matchup against their setter. 11 kills and .625 hitting efficiency, that's a pretty wicked night. Overall, I thought our whole team did a great job. Annika Olsen was great in the back row, digging up everything on the cross court swing. Good collective performance and focus. It was a great win for us."

Iowa moves to 15-8 on the year and 4-6 in the Big Ten. The Hawkeyes travel to Michigan for a two-game road trip this week, facing Michigan on Friday night and then Michigan State on Saturday evening.

Men’s golf finishes seventh at Royal Oaks Intercollegiate

The Hawkeyes headed to Royal Oaks to compete and finished pretty well, just two strokes out of a tie for seventh.

Iowa moved up two spots in the team race and it seems it really was the first round that held them back, at least according to Iowa head men’s golf coach Tyler Stith.

"When you look at our performance as a group it was ultimately the first round that held us back. Our second and third rounds were fifth and fourth best. Today was especially difficult in a 30 mph wind,” Stith said to HawkeyeSports. “It magnifies mistakes and makes you second guess every decision. We showed a lot of character today as a team. Benton was steady all tournament. He ended with an awesome birdie to shoot even and finish in the top 20."

The par scores for the tournament:

Iowa’s off until February.