Northwestern's baseball team dropped the first game of Saturday's doubleheader, 12-9, as Iowa outhit the Wildcats 18-10 at Duane Banks Field in Iowa City. NU used four pitchers with starter Gabe Ribas (Brunswick, Maine/Brunswick) recording his fourth loss of the season. NU falls to 9-11 in the Big Ten and 18-22 overall.

Northwestern jumped out early as Steve Haake (Belleville, Ill./Gibault) doubled to right center field. With one out, right fielder Brandon Ackley (Carmel, Ind./Carmel) singled to right center, scoring Haake and giving NU a 1-0 lead.

Iowa came right back in the bottom of the first, tying the score at 1-1 on center fielder Kyle Thousand's single to center. Thousand's hit scored left fielder Andy Jansen who reached on a single to left and stole second.

In the top of the second, catcher Ken Padgett (Littleton, Colo./Arapahoe) hit a one-out single to left and advanced to third on shortstop Jon Mikrut's (Wauconda, Ill./Carmel) double off the left field wall. Padgett crossed the plate on Eric Roeder's (Onsted, Mich./Onsted) ground out to short, making the score 2-1 Wildcats.

Just like in the first, Iowa came right back scoring a single run as designated hitter Brian Bucklin singled to lead off the inning and advance 90-feet on a sacrifice bunt. Shortstop Jeff Gremley singled to center, scoring Bucklin and tying the game 2-2.

Iowa took its first lead of the ball game in the bottom of the third, scoring four runs on five hits and a Wildcat error. Iowa strung together three doubles and two singles, sending all nine hitters to the plate.

In the fifth, Roeder reached on an error and came around to score on Haake's fourth home run of the year. Haake's blast went over the right centerfield wall and made the score 6-4 Iowa.

The Hawkeyes answered again as Bucklin hit his second home run of the series taking a Stanley Finch (Lubbock, Texas/Cooper) offering over the right field wall, putting Iowa up 7-4. The Hawkeyes weren't done yet, putting up four more runs, batting around the order. After five complete innings, Iowa was up 11-4.

Down by seven and running out of outs, NU jumped on Hawkeye reliever Nick Jensen who entered the game with a 1.07 ERA. Jensen failed to record an out as NU tallied four runs against the right-hander. The 'Cats weren't done as Tharp singled up the middle to score NU's fifth run of the inning and make the score 11-9 Iowa.

Iowa scored one run in the ninth as reliever Andy Adams (Mt. Prospect, Ill./Prospect) gave up two hits in his 12th appearance of the season.

NU went quietly in the ninth as Iowa improves to 9-12 in the conference and 20-21-1 overall.