Omaha (5-8) vs. Nebraska (9-4-1) Game Thread

[brfrad]

20 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

Golden opportunity here.

Wasted.

 

One knock with this offense is we strike out far too much.  

Edited March 15, 2023 by brfrad

[brfrad]

Christo with the 2nd best outing of the relievers.  Only hit 1 batter and gave up no runs.

[AuroranHusker]

Lost 10-6 after taking a 6-5 lead. Not great.

 

 

[hskr4life]

Clunker— don’t let this one beat you twice Thursday.

[brfrad]

I hope this performance angers this team.  They better be embarassed.  Free baserunners was the difference.  8 walks, 2 hit batters, and 3 errors are not going to win many games.  Add to that striking out 12 times.  

[brfrad]

Here is the difference between a team in the SEC and a team in the Big 10 in baseball.  Nebraska loses 10 - 6 to Omaha.  We can't afford to lose this game as our opportunities to lower our RPI are pretty slim.  Ole Miss loses to Jacksonville State 10 - 6, and they have nothing to worry about because they have countless chances to have a low RPI.  That's what is frustrating about losing to Omaha.  You can't afford the loss.

 

I know this is early, but here are the RPI's for the Big 10

 

Iowa (9) Play them on the road.  Need to win 1

Penn State (179) Play them at home.  Have to sweep

Nebraska (137)

Indiana (93) Miss them

Illinois (8) Home Need to win series

Ohio State (38) Miss them

Michigan State (67) Miss them

Maryland (105) Road Need to win 1

Purdue (169) Road Have to win 2

Rutgers (39) Miss them

Michigan (101) Road Need to win 2

Minnesota (238) Home Must sweep

Northwestern (283) Home Must sweep

 

17-7 in the Big 10 Probably have to go 13 - 2 in non conference games.  39 wins with a couple in the Big 10 tournament, hopefully gets us in the tournament.  Our non conf schedule is lacking this year.

[brfrad]

We had 3 pitchers give up 0 runs

 

Combined these 3 pitchers

 

5 IP 4 H 0 R 0 BB 8 SO 1 HB

 

The other pitchers

 

4 IP 6 H 8 ER 8 BB 6 SO 1 HB

[throwback]

Brutal loss for RPI purposes - that said, every baseball team has these kinds of games. UNO takes this game verrrry seriously, and they're just good enough to beat us when we aren't on our game.

 

Unfortunately, this may be a sign of what we're in for on Sundays / midweek games. Just don't have the bullpen depth we need for these kinds of games. And when your top frosh arm in Clark is a mess mentally right now, it really complicates things. Especially disappointing that 3 of our senior pitchers couldn't get outs last night. That leads to huge bullpen issues. 

 

If we struggle in midweeks like this, we aren't getting an at-large NCAA bid. Our schedule is too weak overall to have anything but 39-42 regular-season wins and expect an NCAA bid. Need to figure things out past those top 2 starters in a hurry.

 

Having said that, the way NU used its pitching staff last night was odd. Not sure why Garza was on such a tight pitch count. I guess we expect to need him in relief Friday, but the chances of playing both those games is very small. (Not even sure we play Thursday.) When it was clear UNO was going to make it a contest by starting their Sunday guy and having him throw pretty well, we probably needed to readjust our thinking and let Garza go deeper. Also not sure why we didn't use Brockett - if you're going to have Garza on a pitch count, then you could've thrown Brockett on a pitch count, too. To leave Shay out there when he clearly didn't have it for 50+ pitches was really dumb. If they play Thursday, they may need Shay that day, but he threw more pitches than Garza. I understand wanting to get Clark work, but having Garza on a tight pitch count just seemed odd to me. Clark could've thrown at any point - it didn't have to be the 4th inning.

 

Even with the poor pitching, we still could've won the game if our defense or bats show up, though. Even though every team has a game like this from time to time, it's still disappointing. Because of the weak schedule, this team just has very little margin for error, so even though a loss like this is "just baseball," it may come back to bite us later.

 

[Huskerpapa]

Sometimes,  you just have to shake your head and walk away.

[hskr4life]

The question becomes... is the B1G doing enough early to get more than maybe 2 teams in.  I don't know that the answer to that question is a "yes" right now.  

 

Iowa looks ok and at least took 1 from Tech.  PSU looks ok and managed to take 1 from Miami.  We split with Vandy/Ole Miss.  Maryland managed to take 1 from Ole Miss.  Those are all quality wins, but most also came with 1-2 losses as well.  It doesn't appear we've won a series against a good team just yet.  We're running out of opportunities as a conference to do so.

 

That combined with the fact that the bottom of the conference is going to be a HUGE RPI suck for anyone that loses a game to a team down there leads me to believe that we'll want to be one of the top 2 teams to feel relatively safe.

 

That first series against USD may come back to bite us in the rear.

[throwback]

5 hours ago, hskr4life said:

The question becomes... is the B1G doing enough early to get more than maybe 2 teams in.  I don't know that the answer to that question is a "yes" right now.  

 

Iowa looks ok and at least took 1 from Tech.  PSU looks ok and managed to take 1 from Miami.  We split with Vandy/Ole Miss.  Maryland managed to take 1 from Ole Miss.  Those are all quality wins, but most also came with 1-2 losses as well.  It doesn't appear we've won a series against a good team just yet.  We're running out of opportunities as a conference to do so.

 

That combined with the fact that the bottom of the conference is going to be a HUGE RPI suck for anyone that loses a game to a team down there leads me to believe that we'll want to be one of the top 2 teams to feel relatively safe.

 

That first series against USD may come back to bite us in the rear.

Good question - I think it's going to depend on who just dominates the lower half of the league. Gotta dominate those RPI killers and split with everyone else at a minimum. I'd guess if you don't win at least 2/3 of your B1G games, it's going to be a struggle to make the NCAAs. That's not always the case, but the bottom of the league is so bad this year ...

 

Usually 16-8 has you in the conversation to win the regular season title. This year, it's probably more like 18-6 or 19-5 to win the league, maybe even something like 20-4 (assuming Purdue doesn't decide to pretend it's going to rain and skip the last day of the season like last year, so maybe 19-4 will be good enough). 16-8 probably will be more like NCAA bubble territory.