2015 Perfect Game College Baseball Preview Index | 2015 Big Ten Conference Preview


Baseball has never been the main attraction at the University of Iowa. Football and wrestling put Iowa City on the map in the 1970s and '80s, led by Hayden Fry on the gridiron and Dan Gable in the gym. More recently, the Hawkeyes have been to 12 bowl games in the last 14 years, and the wresting program is currently ranked No. 1 in the country, having won 23 of the last 39 national championships.

A school that counts former Houston Astros manager Bo Porter as one of its very few contributions to professional baseball, Iowa ended the 2013 season with just two winning campaigns in its last 17 seasons. So when Jack Dahm's contract as head coach was not renewed after the 2013 season, Rick Heller was named as his replacement. With little fanfare and low expectations, Heller guided the 2014 Hawkeyes to a surprising eight-win improvement over 2013. All of a sudden, the Hawkeyes are on the rise.

A native of Eldon, Iowa, Coach Heller started his coaching career at Upper Iowa – a Division III school – in 1987. He was 23 years old, the youngest head coach in the country. In 12 seasons with his alma mater, Heller was named the Iowa Conference Coach of the Year four times, won three regular season titles and one conference tournament championship.

In 2000, he was hired by Northern Iowa and delivered back-to-back 30-win seasons in 2001 and 2002 for the first time in school history. He also led his team to four Missouri Valley Conference tournament births and a conference championship in 2001. After 10 seasons with the Panthers, Coach Heller coached Indiana State for four years (2010-13), leading the Sycamores to their first outright Missouri Valley Conference championship in school history.

Given his past success, it should've come as no surprise when, in his first year at Iowa, Coach Heller guided the Hawkeyes to a 9-1 start (the program's best start since 1940), a Big Ten tournament berth, and a conference tournament win.

“When Coach Heller came in, his expectation was to win,” Iowa junior righthander Blake Hickman told Perfect Game over the phone last week. “It's been unbelievable to see how fast the program has progressed since my freshman year. We have more of a fan base and the players want to be here now.”

Since taking over the program, Coach Heller challenged his players not to win games, but to help change the culture of Iowa baseball.

“I told the players on day one that we would love them and care for them like we recruited them,” he said. “We just asked them to buy into a philosophy, a plan and a system that we wanted to put into place that would change the face of Iowa baseball. And they did an unbelievable job of that. Usually when you do things that way, the wins follow. And that's exactly what happened.”

A team comprised of a whopping 18 juniors and just a handful of seniors, sophomores and freshman, the pitchers blossomed and the offense soared in Coach Heller's first season. After fielding one of the worst offenses in the Big Ten a year before, Coach Heller's 2014 lineup ranked first in the conference in batting average, hits, runs and on-base percentage.

But he's quick to defer praise for the offensive turnaround.

Iowa Head Coach Rick Heller has made an immediate impact in guiding the Hawkeyes (Photo: Brian Ray / hawkeyessports.com).