Riley Gowens 
Ryan O’Hara 
Cole Kirschsieper
Not surprisingly, Riley Gowens earned the Big Ten Pitcher of the Week award this week. Based on his seven-inning, no-hit performance on Sunday, Gowens’ honor is the first weekly honor for an Illini player in 2021. This award comes on top of his Collegiate Baseball Newspaper National Player of the Week award.
Gowens combined with relievers Ryan O’Hara and Cole Kirschsieper for a team no-hitter on Sunday against Purdue winning 1-0.
All three pitchers in Sunday’s no-hitter as well as catcher Ryan Hampe and Coach Dan Hartleb all had their turn with the media Tuesday afternoon. Here are some of the salient points that came out of the press briefing:
Gowens’ journey
Despite it being his seventh career start, Riley Gowens’ road to 2021 has been a long one. He had been out his first two years due to injury. Riley says that he hadn’t started throwing until last Fall.
According to Coach Hartleb, the acclaim given to Gowens is very well deserved due to all the hard work he has put in getting ready for 2021.
“You always get what you earn. When you’re not pitching well, you earned it. When you pitch well and get a national award, you absolutely deserve it”.
Coach Dan Hartleb
Riley Gowens spoke about the pitching staff being able to contribute all three games against Purdue. “We have a great team culture here but it felt great to give back”
Team effort
Ryan O’Hara (who earned the win stat on Sunday) deserves a lot of credit for the win on Sunday. Not only for preserving the no-hitter but preserving the win. O’Hara, Kellen Sarver and Hampe racked up two outs on a bang-bang dropped strike double play. Both Ryan O’Hara and Ryan Hampe said that play just happened just like that and he just got situated at home plate for the throw from Sarver.
If you haven’t seen the play yet, it’s worth watching this:
Coach Hartleb emphasized the uniqueness of this past weekend. He has never been on the winning side of a no-hitter in his career. As for the 2-3-1 double play in the eighth inning which would have broken the shutout (but not have snapped the no-hitter), Coach said he had never seen such a play.
As for Coach Hartleb, he emphasized that once the team is on the field for a game, he has an laissez faire management style. In his words, he is “kinda hands off on game day”. He did tell his players beforehand, “don’t try to win this game yourself”. As we saw from the results of the game, the truth of that nugget of wisdom bore out.
All three of the pitchers see this past weekend as a turning point for the Illini and in particular, the pitching staff. They were up front about the challenges that the staff has faced.
The big question
In case you’re wondering, every player and Coach Hartleb claimed to not speak of the no-hitter during the game. I’m sure part of this was because of the time-honored tradition of not mentioning a no-hitter when in progress. However, the biggest reason was that until the top of the ninth inning, the score was 0-0 and Illinois’ biggest goal was getting the lead. Ryan Hampe mentioned that he realized there was something big happening when he overheard a Purdue fan say “Riley Gowens has a no-hitter going”. According to Hampe, the focus in the dugout was just scoring runs.
Congratulations to Riley Gowens for the accolades this week!