Iowa Baseball Schedules Midweek Game vs. Division III Opponent

Baseball at Duane Banks Stadium will start a little earlier this season for the Iowa Hawkeyes.

With the chilly temperatures of the Midwest winter sending Big Ten teams south to more favorable climates, it is usual for squads from the conference to not have a home game — or at least an abundance of them — early on.

That appeared to be the case for Iowa heading into 2026, but after it was announced that the Hawkeyes would play the University of Wisconsin–Platteville Pioneers in a nonconference bout on Feb. 17 in Iowa City, it became clear that Hawkeyes fans will be able to see their beloved baseball team in person sooner than expected.

Baseball at Banks❓
Baseball at Banks‼️

We have added a game against UW-Platteville on the 17th. pic.twitter.com/sEF9Qd6QV5
— Iowa Baseball (@UIBaseball) February 11, 2026

The contest will come in the immediate aftermath of the Hawkeyes’ trip to Phoenix for the MLB Desert Invitational, which will see the team face the Kansas State Wildcats, Air Force Falcons and Northeastern Huskies.

The game will start at 3:05 p.m. CST. It will be televised on Big Ten+, with a radio broadcast available via the Hawkeye Radio Network.

The Pioneers Won’t Help Iowa’s NCAA Tournament Chances

Iowa Hawkeyes players huddle up before a semifinal game of the Big Ten Baseball Tournament against Michigan, Saturday, May 27, 2023, at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Neb. | Joseph Cress/Iowa City Press-Citizen / USA TODAY NETWORK

The UW–Platteville Pioneers, a Division III program that plays in the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, has not had much success in baseball as of late. The team finished 20-21 a year ago, 16-21 in 2024, 10-25 in 2023 and 13-22 in 2022. Winning, it appears, has been a foreign concept in Platteville for quite some time.

That revelation raises a crucial, and puzzling, question: Why would Iowa, a baseball program that is definitely not a bottom-feeder, schedule a midweek game against an opponent like UW–Platteville? Why would it stoop down to the Division III ranks? There is no clear answer, but it can be assumed that both Iowa and UW–Platteville wanted to play a baseball game on Feb. 17 — something both schools were not slated to do — and a deal was struck. It is not a flashy observation, yet it is probably still true.

Still, the game will not do much for Iowa’s résumé. Should it win — and it most definitely should — there will not be much to glean from the result. If the Hawkeyes somehow fall to the Pioneers, however, that is where the real bombshells would begin. Losing to a team like UW–Platteville would be such a drag on Iowa’s chances of making the NCAA Tournament that it would be hard to see how a run at a championship would even be feasible.

But that is not likely to happen. The Hawkeyes are far and away the better squad, meaning that the Feb. 17 game can be chalked up as a victory. This is baseball, though — anything can happen in America’s most memorable, unpredictable sport.

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