throwback

That'll probably be the craziest, most exciting finish we'll see in the entire NCAA tournament. Wow

NU 89 ASU 82 4

Sounds like the Crown could be the Nebraska home-loss revenge tour.

I thought the approach - at least early - was better. Now the bar is pretty low - the first 4 guys still K'd. But at least we were fouling off some tough pitches and were getting deep into the counts. Felt like we had more swinging strikes/foul balls in the first half of the game than we've been having. We were actually competing at the plate, which we haven't done a lot of this season. However, I can't count the number of so-so bullpen guys that have completely shut us down this season. The competitive at-bats seemed to fall off once UCLA tied it. Overall, it's still pretty awful. I would live with a higher K rate if we were racking up extra base hits. When you don't hit for power, the Ks are killers. Someone will have to explain to me how we don't use our one of our most pro-ready arms in Broderick all weekend. Why not bring him in in the 5th or 6th when the game was getting away from us? No point in saving a closer for the 9th only when you can't get late leads. I will say UCLA is pretty good. They look the part. Right now, we don't. Pepperdine is pretty bad and they start conference play this upcoming weekend, so we'll probably see a lot of young arms from them, as they'll save their best guys for the weekend. Gotta get two in the midweek, but we'll see. Tough to be optimistic. To even get to 30 wins, we have to go 23-14 from here. Doesn't seem likely with this offense.

Might be tough to make the 12-team B1G tourney at the rate we're going. We don't look like anything close to a .500 team at this point. I mean we're 0-4-1 in the first five weekend "series". Even though we've been on the road for all but one weekend, that's atrocious. The B1G is an offensive league this year, and even if your team emphasizes pitching, you'd better be able to score some. Our offense is really bad - we're not walking enough, we're not stringing hits / "passing the baton", we're not good on the basepaths, we're not really hitting for power or squaring pitches up often enough, and we're struggling on the rare occasions where we get guys in scoring position. Other than that, things are going fine. I mean Stone had all of our RBIs thru the first 16 innings out in LA - and he only recently rejoined the lineup. This is Mike Anderson-level-offense bad. Bottom line: Our veteran returning position players just aren't producing. The couple of veteran transfers we brought in are not hitting either. And our 2 most veteran bullpen guys were awful with the game on the line Friday and Saturday. So many older guys who are fighting it. Really disappointing that the coaches can't seem to put their fingers on what's going wrong and get the ship righted. Looking ahead, USC just won the first two of its series at Michigan. We are in deep, deep trouble. I never saw this coming. Losing Mac hurts, but even if he's here these last two weekends, we probably have the same record because we can't score.

Got a fool-proof plan to fix all our problems

FRANCON 1 - ejected!!!

I would've liked to have seen Blachowicz get a chance, but I get throwing these two. Both have a lot of upside and need innings to try to overcome some control issues. We'll see how long the leash is. Guessing they'll both get 40-50 pitch limits, unless it goes really well. I'd imagine Childress will try everything to let them get to the 40-50 mark, even if it means a few walks get mixed in.

Spring break in LA There are worse places to go I guess. Probably better to stay out there than go back and forth twice. We put in enough miles traveling in the first few weeks. Plus we still have to go the other way and play Maryland later.

Very curious to see who gets the starts Tuesday and Wednesday. Hope we let a couple of freshmen throw and see what they can do.

It just felt like we couldn't string together that defense-fueled 10+ to 0 run at home once the home winning streak ended vs Rutgers. Last year, we lived on those big runs at home. Couldn't get enough stops in most B1G games at home to put together a big run ... other than against Michigan, but we couldn't score to put together a run that night. We did it on the road a few times, but struggled with it at home over the last several games.

Kind of ironic that an Iowa team that normally doesn't give a crap about defense was able to successfully focus on stopping Brice for 40 minutes better than almost anyone else in the league did this season.

Definitely this - Mast was so good directing the offense from the top (and Walker was pretty good, too) - I know I kind of took it for granted that the next guy would be able to do it too. Just not in their skill sets, definitely nowhere near Mast. Ulis & Worster are not your traditional penetrate-and-find-the-open-guy point guards, either.

Chose hoops over baseball today, but seems like we pitched really well from what I could track. Christo has the stuff to be a nasty reliever, just has to trust his two primary pitches. Nice to see the strikeouts down on offense, but still way too many fly outs and pop outs for my liking. And we missed some big scoring chances before and after Carey's HR. Just not enough offense overall against a poor pitching team in UW. The B1G is going to be an offensive league this year, I think, so we have to find a way to score more runs. Huge stretch coming up. We'll be nearly halfway through the season by the time we finish the trip to LA. Make or break time. Today was a good way to start the bounce back.

I imagine it's in the TV contract with FOX that B1G teams (and the Big East and Big XII) cannot turn down invitations to the Crown tournament. Same doesn't apply to individual players, who could choose to opt out, of course. I imagine if FOX is paying them a reasonable amount as part of the NIL for the tournament, though, most players will stick it out, absent someone leaving to start a pro career overseas. With a year of film on our defense, B1G teams clearly have figured it out - not surprising considering the quality of coaching in this league. Adjustments have to be made to the defensive scheme for next season. Ultimately, Iowa wasn't going to let Brice beat them. We just couldn't find enough buckets playing 4-on-3 (or 3.5) most of the game. Got nice help from Sam and Gary, but we really needed Essegian to be on today.