Bottom line, Coach Will Bolt wasn’t happy with Nebraska baseball’s 4-0 loss to Kansas at Haymarket Park Tuesday night. Of course not. “Losing sucks,” he said. “I absolutely hate it.”
Even so, “I don’t think we played bad,” said Bolt.
The Huskers just need to flush it now and move forward. Next up, an important series against Maryland at Shipley Field in College Park this weekend.
Important? Every Big Ten series is important if Nebraska is to qualify for the conference tournament. The top 12 teams advance, and the Huskers are tied for 12th, at 7-11, with Minnesota and Rutgers. Maryland is 16th, at 5-13, and 19-23 overall. The Huskers dropped to 19-22 with the Kansas loss.
“You play well in three phases of the game to win. I don’t have any qualms about how we went about it in any of the three phases, honestly,” Bolt said. “I just thought maybe the only thing about the lineup today was that we didn’t piece together three or four consecutive good at-bats.
“I mean, there was an inning there that one stretch, we had six straight ‘barrels’ with nothing to show for it. But I thought the guys that were in there did a nice job. They took good at-bats … not going to be perfect all the time, but there was a lot to like there.”
Nebraska will need good at-bats this weekend in Maryland’s hitter-friendly ballpark, or “bandbox” as it has been called because of short-distance fences. Despite their record, the Terrapins are hitting .290 with 64 home runs as a team. Nebraska is hitting .269 with 43 home runs.
Four Maryland starters are hitting over .300, led by Chris Hacopian, who’s batting .351 with seven home runs and 42 runs-batted-in. Alex Calarco has hit 16 home runs and driven in 57 runs, both team highs, while batting .312. Hollis Porter has hit 14 home runs and driven in 46.
The Terrapin pitching staff isn’t quite as impressive, with a 6.53 staff ERA. But sophomore left-hander Kyle McCoy has 10 starts with a 3-2 record and 3.15 ERA in 60 innings.
Nebraska’s weekend starters are, of course, left-handers Will Walsh (4-5, 4.72) and Jackson Brockett (1-3, 4.06) and right-hander Ty Horn (1-4, 7.15).
Walsh, coming off a rough start against Northwestern, has been the Friday-night starter.
Max Buettenback went 2-for-4 Tuesday night to raise his average to a team-high .315. Cayden Brumbaugh is the only other Husker regular hitting over .300, at .302. Buettenback and Tyler Stone are tied for the team lead in home runs with seven. Dylan Carey has six home runs and a team-high 31 RBIs.
The problem Tuesday was “just little, small things that came to bite us,” said Buettenback, noting that Bolt told the team afterward to set it aside, “don’t take too much away from this game, don’t get too upset, but stay hungry because, you know nobody likes to lose. So he thought we played well, too. Stay hungry, just compete every day, don’t let a day slip by.
“You’re just got to come to the ballpark and compete.”
As noted earlier, the Terrapins are “very offensive,” Bolt said. “It’s an incredibly offensive ballpark, so we’re going to need to limit the free passes and keep the ball on the ground. And for us offensively, we’ve got to continue to slug because that’s going to come into play in that ballpark.”
The fence in left field at Shipley Field is listed at 320 feet, right 325 and center 385.
