throwback

I actually was somewhat encouraged last night - I know, low bar. We played the vets and had almost 20 base runners and scored 8 runs while showing some power. We still didn't get the clutch hits, but we didn't just give in after falling behind 11-2, either. Granted, we didn't get the meat of the KSU pitching staff, but we still hit a little better than it had been going. Sanderson & Frost looked good at the plate, and that's more important than wins over these next handful of non-con games. We weren't ready to play in the early innings, which isn't surprising coming off such a long road trip. Scheduling this game like we did was a huge mistake, but sometimes the schedule doesn't work out in your favor. I liked how our main bullpen guys looked after the terrible start. Unfortunately, K-State is in quite a bit better shape than us right now, so I expected a loss. Outside of how we pitched in the first few innings and played defense in the first, that's a loss I can live with.

Sigh. Just can't get any momentum going. This may not be very popular, but it's time for the coaches to stop eff-ing around with the lineup and rely on the vets who won the jobs in fall and preseason. Tell the vets we're going to ride you the next several weeks, even if you're slumping, and you're not getting yanked out of the lineup after an 0-fer. We need Swanny, Frost, and Sanderson to deliver some power to generate runs. We need Stokes to get on a heater like he did in May last year. We need Helligso to hit like he did last year when he was facing us. The only way we're salvaging this season is if those vets get going. We clearly can't survive scoring 3 or 4 runs a game. So if the vets don't get going, we're screwed anyway. The only young guy I'm playing is Nunez. Everyone else has shown they can get hot and produce runs at this level in the past. It's time to ride them and try to give them some confidence. It probably won't be popular because it means next weekend is probably going to be a bloodbath at home. But we have to try to get these guys going before B1G play resumes the following weekend. And our RPI is so screwed right now we have virtually zero chance of earning an at-large, so the Oregon St series means nothing. We have to focus on trying to get into the top 12 of the league at this point, so we don't miss the B1G tourney. My lineup: C-Helligso 1B-Stone 2B-Nunez SS-Carey 3B-Stokes (maybe Overbeek against RHP) LF-Swanson CF-Brumbaugh RF-Frost DH-Sanderson This lineup is going to struggle defensively, too, which will cause a lot of grumbling from the home fans. But the pitching staff is the strength of the team, and they're just going to have to carry the load of pitching around defensive issues. It's no longer time to think about NCAA berths - it's time to focus on making sure we qualify for the B1G tourney.

NU's Taylor from Millard South also an individual champion - whatever the staff / team did to get ready for the postseason needs to be bottled. Insane how well they performed at the B1G and NCAA meets. I did not have NU wrestling on my bingo card as the Husker team that would have the highest national tournament finish in 2024-25. (I supposed bowling can still catch them. And baseball could go on a 40-ish game win streak from here to claim the CWS. Fingers crossed.)

Sincerest appreciation to War Eagle from 99% of the state of Nebraska.

Well, if he takes off early, you just catch it and double him off. The rule isn't designed to protect the defense; it's designed to protect the baserunners from what we just did. Every coach on the planet tells his guys to just go back to the bag and stand there when the infield fly is called. Just a total brain fart by USC - you rarely see that work in 12 and under ball, let alone at the D-1 level.

They can advance at their own risk either by tagging after a catch or after the ball hits the ground - can't believe we pulled off the hidden ball trick and the "let's drop the infield fly on purpose" trick in the same week. Usually it's the West Coast teams that try to pull that stuff, so they should be ready for it. Can't believe the runner took off for 3rd - never, never, never make the last out at 3rd. Wow. Those were some clutch at bats in the 9th - we finally fought in the late innings and against a really good closer. Hope we can keep the momentum going. And nice to see us use Broderick multiple innings to keep the game close - that was huge. Feels good!

Good points - I mean I kind of get the baserunners feel like they have to try to be aggressive and make something happen when we're so bad at getting clutch hits. But this isn't high school. Division I teams are going to make the right play when you're overaggressive on the bases 9 times out of 10. Gotta be smarter about it. Just another symptom of a team that has no confidence in its teammates to come through in the clutch. Everyone is trying to do too much. And at some point, the base coaches have to start owning all these pickoffs.

Same old, same old. 2 baserunners total in 8 of the innings, and one of them gets thrown out by a mile trying to take second. And then in the one inning USC makes a defensive mistake and we get something going, we get back-picked at 3rd base with less than 2 outs. Unbelievably bad baseball. Sad part is the pitching staff has been pretty solid, even without Mac. Offense is beyond trash. From the 5th inning on, we hit two balls out of the infield. Little League stuff. And USC didn't even use its awesome closer yet. And I hate to pick on Carey, who's been great at short and is one of the only guys making solid contact right now, but I believe he completed one of the rarest of hat tricks last night - I think he's now been picked off all three bases this season, and we're not even halfway through yet. The number of Huskers who have that "honor" throughout school history has to be incredibly small. Maybe we're so bad at running the basis because we hardly ever get on base? Something to ponder while waiting to see what path we take toward our 3-run outburst today.

NU going to finish ahead of Iowa at the B1G and NCAA meets. Will the state just implode?

Without AJ Storr, too. Nobody did less with more NIL spending than Rock Chalk. Maybe K-State. Not a great return on investment for the Sunflower State.

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.