UNI coach hopes players learn from tough season

The UNI baseball team closed out what coach Rick Heller called a “dissapointing” season this past weekend. The Panthers finished with a record of 25-31 overall but failed to qualify for the Missouri Valley Conference tournanement with a league record of 12-20. Heller says there’s a lot of reasons for that, including injuries to several key players. He says it seems as soon as they got close, something else would happen. Heller says injuries were a factor in their slow start and they could never get out of the hole. He says they’d win a few games, and then have another setback, but overall he says he’s not disappointed with the way they played. He says they feel this is just a blip on the radar and they look forward to next year. Heller says with the recent success the program has enjoyed the expectations have grown. He says they want it to be a major disappointment to not get into the tournament. This year they just misssed it by a tiebreaker, and winning one other close game would’ve put them over the top. Heller says they’ll learn from this season and have a better one next year.