throwback

I'm impressed - we did a lot of good things against a motivated, solid team in their park across the weekend, yet we also showed quite a bit of grit on getaway day. To blow an 8-1 lead and find a way to steal a couple of runs to win it late is impressive. Love Worthley's bounce back today. We need him to be one of our top left handers. I did not expect us to be over .500 after the first two weekends, yet here we are. And we're closer to 6-1 than 2-5, which is incredibly impressive. I feel pretty confident we've played some legit teams so far. We went through some hiccups that Northern teams always go through when traveling south against good teams early in the year, along with an injury to one of our top hitters from the first weekend, yet still we're over .500. A little worrisome we have a couple of minor injuries already in the bullpen, but that's where our depth should pay off. Timmerman will not have many days like he had today. He's good. Need to cut down on strikeouts on offense, of course. The Ks are kind of odd, as we're hitting a lot of balls the other way, so I don't think we're overswinging. Hopefully, it's more of a blip than anything, but it is worrisome. Still, we have enough exit velocity when we are making contact that I don't think we need to change a lot of things at this point. I love the lineup - we have those pesky speed guys who are going to make contact at the top, followed by some nice power in the middle, and guys who can get hot and cause a lot of problem at the back end. Nice balance. I like this team a lot. They can score a few different ways, they play pretty good defense, they have a lot of arms they can try when things aren't going well, and they have some grit. That's a good formula in the B1G and in college baseball as a whole. Next weekend should be a lot of fun against an unbeaten C of C team that's dominated a pretty weak schedule so far.

NU 67 OSU 65

Wow - Minny 23-3 ATS - 23-4 after tomorrow, but still impressive.

This is all Childress - work fast & attack the zone. Trust your stuff. Trust your defense. Let me call the game and focus on executing your pitches. There's no time for overthinking it and other nonsense, whether it's in practice, warming up in the bullpen, or with in-game situations. When it's time to work, we're going to work. It's paying dividends so far with most of the guys we're putting on the bump - newcomers and, after last night, veterans alike. And it doesn't hurt when you can teach kids how to throw the slider like almost no one else in the country. And I'm not trying to disparage what Christy did last year - what he did worked for some guys. Overall and staff-wide, though, it's just different with Childress in charge.

Looks like there was one idiot with some hot takes in this thread. Shows what I know ... nothing.

Shows what I know - helluva win and that's an understatement - to take down their ace and to have Christo put that performance out there is beyond unexpected. This is the Christo we've been waiting for, and he picked the perfect time to do it. Sets the tone for the entire series. It wouldn't shock me if Childress decided to put Christo up against GCU's ace as a challenge to him, showing him just how good he can be, as long as he trusts himself and challenges hitters. Whatever they did to get him going tonight was the perfect choice, and you could just feel his confidence growing with every inning. Considering what had been going on with him over the past several weeks in workouts, this was simply amazing. Too many Ks on offense again, but we made up for it with clutch hitting. Defense was nails again. Time to get greedy and get at least 2 wins more now.

NU 79 Minny 75

Nice to send another team to rock bottom for a change.

Loved the way our guards were willing rebounders - especially Lawrence - that made a big difference and let our big guys tie up their big guys, rather than focusing on grabbing the ball. They still got us on the boards, but without that effort from our guards, it would've been a lot worse. When we went to that small-ish lineup coming out of the timeout after IU cut it to 3, I thought the coaches were crazy, but that was just the right antidote - swarming their big guys got them out of their comfort zone and let us stretch the lead back. Brice was so good after IU cut it to 3. Lawrence was too, but -- to dust off an oldie but a goodie -- that was Brice figuring out how good he can be. Nice to show some grit on the road after IU made its run. Bodes well for these final few weeks. Now 24-10 over our last 34 games. That's insanely good.

For HB's sake, I hope they sell beer in the stadium. Thursday night may not be a fun watch sober. Hope I'm wrong.

Well, this should be interesting. It appears GCU is using its Friday starter on Thursday. He's probably better than anyone we saw last week. It'd be pretty crazy if we won Thursday. I'm not surprised NU is leaving Sears on Friday and Walsh on Saturday, as it's better early in the year to give them the full week of rest between starts. Plus that gets those two away from GCU's top arm. And I get giving Christo a start, as he was as close to the #1 guy coming out of fall as we had - maybe he returns to that form out of nowhere against GCU's best pitcher. Sears & Walsh have shown they'll attack the zone - now we need the other two guys to do the same. GCU isn't going to overwhelm us with their offense, but they'll punish us if we make mistakes with walks. Probably two pretty similar teams in terms of makeup, but the GCU pitchers have more experience / success at this level. And of course, us not having Overbeek is a tough blow, as his replacement will be getting their first innings and at-bats of the season and it'll almost certainly be someone who will be seeing their first action in an NU uniform. I can't imagine we'll just pop his replacement into the #2 hole, so that means shuffling the lineup as well. Maybe Silva moves up to #2? Or maybe they just slide everyone up a spot and put the new guy in at #8 - I know Bolt loves having a second "lead off" guy in the 9 hole. Carey can certainly hit #2. Still hoping for a big weekend for us, as these games could end up in Q1 by the end of the season. GCU beat Ohio St last night 10-3, by the way, to go to 4-0. They've scored a lot of runs late in games against bullpens so far, so our late-inning guys will need to be locked in.

That's about where I thought the line would be - time to get a outright road win as a 'dog

Sigh. This is why we can't have nice things. A tough weekend just got tougher.

Looks like our primary non-con opponents did what they were supposed to do on the opening weekend - with the exception of NMSU, but we knew they'd be pretty bad coming into the year. Overall, nice to see our non-con opponents rack up a lot of wins, which should help our RPI. How our next 6 non-con opponents (that we'll play in 2-, 3-, or 4-game series) did on weekend 1: Grand Canyon 3-0 Wins vs Georgetown, USC (by an impressive 8-1 score) and BYU This is going to be a tough one - GCU allowed 5 runs in its first 3 games NEXT UP: GCU plays Ohio St Tuesday before we come in for the 4-game series College of Charleston 4-0 C of C swept Marshall in 4 games, outscoring them 30-9. Marshall was pretty bad last year at 16-37, so C of C did what it was supposed to do NEXT UP: Youngstown State (3 gms) South Alabama 4-0 USA took care of 2 weak teams (North Alabama and Southern Indiana (2x)) and 1 pretty good team (Lamar) over the weekend by a combined 25-6 score USA had an uncharacteristically bad 22-31 record last year, which hurt our RPI, so a 4-0 start is hopefully a good omen for our RPI this year NEXT UP: SE Louisiana (1 game), Jacksonville State (3 gms) Wichita St 2-1 Won the first two games at Ark-Little Rock 32-5 before losing the Sunday game 5-4 UALR had a decent record last year at 31-23 but a poor RPI of #173 NEXT UP: Tough tournament vs Virginia, Auburn, and Iowa Nicholls 3-0 Swept Sacred Heart by a combined 40-14, including 16-0 in the opener SHU was pretty bad last year at 20-30 NEXT UP: at Tulane midweek (1 gm), vs NAIA Dillard midweek (1 gm), vs Eastern Illinois (3 gms) New Mexico St 2-2 NMSU split four games with South Dakota St, so a pretty bad weekend for a southern team playing a Summit League team NMSU has a hitter friendly park, but scoring 36 runs over four games is still pretty good But they gave up 34 runs, so pretty bad on the mound NEXT UP: at McNeese State (4 games) _____ Teams we've played: Baylor 0-3 Home vs Lamar (1 gm) - Home vs Indiana (3 gms) Texas Tech 2-1 Neutral vs Tex-Arlington (1 gm) - Neutral vs Oregon St (1 gm) - Home vs Tex Southern (3 gms) Oklahoma 2-1 At Dallas Baptist (1 gm) - Home vs Wright St (4 gms)

#@(@$@!! Well, I expected 1-2 but this is a 1-2 kick in the nuts, as we should've split the last two games at worst. Those 2 losses are going to haunt if we're playing well in May. I'll stay positive, even though I'm not really in the mood to be. Tech and Oklahoma are really good. For us as a northern team to challenge those two on opening weekend like we did -- and outplay them for long stretches -- was really good. We definitely took advantage of being able to be outside quite a bit before going to Texas. We were really good most of the weekend without getting anything from our 4-5-6 hitters, which is encouraging, as those guys are going to get it going. The Ks are a significant concern on offense, as well as the lack of clutch hitting, but we are finding ways to manufacture runs, which is important. The bats will get going as the season goes along, they always do, and we had some good velocities off the bat that resulted in outs. But we have to cut down on Ks when we have power limitations. 8 free passes today from our pitchers = loss. For the weekend, 11 walks/HBP vs 28 Ks is solid, though, especially considering the level of opposition. Things weren't quite as sharp on the mound today, but I still think we're in good shape depth-wise there. Wouldn't surprise me to see Timmerman get a start vs GCU, as neither Clark nor Christo were too good today. We'll need 4 starters the next 2 weekends, so it's a good chance to give Timmerman a shot. Another tough weekend on tap as GCU can play. 2-2 would be a good weekend, but I'll hope for more.

Watching live, I'm pretty sure he called a double foul on the 2 guys shoving each other in the lane, which means a jump ball - but then after he blew the whistle, he wanted to be sure Iowa had the possession arrow, so the call didn't actually affect the game, so the refs got together to make sure. Maybe the refs were meeting to see if they needed to review it for a flagrant, too. It's also possible he blew the whistle to call the double foul, thought better of it, and then wasn't sure what to do with the inadvertent whistle. Either way, after the meeting, they moved the possession arrow from Iowa to Wisco but Iowa still inbounded.

Ugh - sucks to lose that game when we had so many chances, but it's hard to be discouraged after outplaying a high-level southern team for 8 innings and having the baseball gods give them quite a few breaks. Pitching staff is way ahead of where I'd have guessed they'd be. Hitters are still adjusting, but I think there are some dudes that will develop in that lineup. Really sucks that Worthley had such a rough outing - he was nails all fall and has been great in the preseason in the spring. I think he was pretty close to getting the ball to start today instead of Walsh. Speaking of, wow, Walsh was good today. Love our pitching depth. Childress is making a big difference already ... and I'm not one that completely disliked what Christy was doing. I mean, he did coach 4 pitchers who were taken in the Top 10 rounds of the draft. Still, Childress is just on another level, and it's obvious already. Tomorrow will be interesting. We'll see what Clark has. OU can really run, so having the lefty in there to keep the running game down should help. Would be awesome to come home 2-1. EDIT: OU with the short, short turnaround - but they'll be feeling pretty good after beating Tennessee 5-1 in 10 innings late last night. Hopefully they're still celebrating this morning.

With the way PSU uglied up the game and set basketball back several decades, and with the way the refs let it happen, we needed our lunch pail guys to step up and Allick, Gary, and Hoiberg were all great. We were very clearly the fresher team as the game went on, and took full advantage after a frustrating first half. We cleaned up the glass well after all those PSU bricks, outscoring them in both second chance points and points off turnovers, which are two huge areas for our team. When we have success in those areas at home, we usually win pretty easily. Someone has to explain to me how PSU can play the game the way they play defensively, and, yet, we end up with 15 total fouls to their 13 (one of which was a technical) on our home floor. Glad the guys didn't let any of that garbage bother them. Time to go get a win in Bloomington

NU 73 IU 70

At some point, I'm charging the mound .... just so I can get ejected and go ice down my body.

B1G & NU Opponents Friday 2/16 The good (for our RPI) · NU 4, Baylor 1 · Rutgers 14, Winthrop 5 · Maryland 5, Georgia Southern 4 · N’western 3, Tulane 0 The meh · Duke 6, Indiana 3 · Penn St 6, Monmouth 5 (10) · Illinois 3, Akron 1 (DH-1) · Michigan St 10, Merrimack 3 · Purdue 6, Stony Brook 0 · Iowa 5, Seton Hall 2 · Minnesota 8, CS-Bakersfield 7 (12) · New Mexico St 8, S Dakota St 6 · Nicholls 16, Sacred Heart 0 · College of Charleston 15, Marshall 3 · Grand Canyon 5, Georgetown 2 · South Alabama 3, North Alabama 2 · Cal 5, K-State 2 · Wichita St 18, UALR 5 · bluebirds 24, Coppin St 0 The ugly · W Michigan 14, Michigan 13 (11) · Akron 5, Illinois 4 (11 / DH-2) · Boston College 9, Ohio St 2 · Illinois-Chicago 11, Kansas 9 Shriners Classic – Day 1 · NU 4, Baylor 1 · Oregon 4, Oklahoma 2 · Tennessee 6, Texas Tech 2

Just noticed on those highlights that we didn't throw the ball around the horn after strikeouts. I think that's new - maybe that's a Childress thing - he certainly likes his guys to get up on the bump and throw to keep the game moving. Also noticed that I was wrong earlier, Brumbaugh did peek as he was scoring in the 6th - he didn't slow down at least, but I'd prefer he crosses the plate before he peeks.