By the time you read this, if you’re so inclined, Nebraska baseball might be trying to stay alive in the NCAA Chapel Hill Regional in a losers’ bracket game against fourth-seed Holy Cross Saturday.
That game was scheduled to start at 11 a.m. CDT, “was” because the Huskers’ opening game Friday against Oklahoma was slated to begin at 4 p.m. CDT. Because of weather, first pitch was 7:37 p.m.
And the official game time was 3 hours, 42 minutes.
Oh yes, Oklahoma snapped Nebraska’s five-game winning streak, 7-4.
That might seem closer than it was for the first seven innings. The second-seeded Sooners led 7-0 going into the eighth, when Nebraska made a run at a finish Husker fans have come to expect down the stretch of the season. The Huskers got a bases-loaded triple from Max Buettenback and a one-out sacrifice fly from Will Jesske. But the inning ended with a Riley Silva strikeout.
Buettenback’s triple was “just a really big swing in that spot right there to get us back in the game,” Coach Will Bolt said. Nebraska went one-two-three in the ninth, however, after Drew Christo came on to get a bases-loaded strikeout in the bottom of the eighth.
Mentioning Silva’s strikeout in the eighth wasn’t meant to throw him under the bus. The Huskers struck out 14 times, something with which they had a problem early in the season.
They hadn’t had double-digit strikeouts in a game since mid-April.
That wasn’t all on Nebraska, of course. Sooner pitching deserved a shoutout, especially starter Malachi Witherspoon, who struck out nine in six innings. Witherspoon, whose twin Kyson apparently was held out in anticipation of a second-round match-up against top seed and host North Carolina, a 4-0 winner against Holy Cross, went into Friday’s game with a 3-8 record and 5.53 earned-run-average.
In marked contrast, Kyson is 10-3 with a 2.47 ERA.
The decision to start Malachi looked as if it might have been a mistake in the first inning, when the Huskers had the bases loaded with two outs and Dylan Carey at-bat. But Carey grounded out to Witherspoon, and Nebraska couldn’t mount a rally until the eighth.
That came after Oklahoma scored three runs in the seventh, following a ground out, a walk, an error, a hit batter and a passed ball, followed by an RBI ground out and two-run single. The Sooners’ first three runs came on two home runs, their fourth on a one-out single after a walk and a hit batter.
Husker pitchers walked six, with the two hit batters.
Bolt’s message to his players post-game was, “we kind of have our backs against the wall, and we could have come up with every reason in the world to not be here right how just based on how the year’s gone for us,” he said. “But, come up (with) no excuses, ready to play.”
Holy Cross, the Patriot League Tournament champion, is 31-26 after Friday’s loss, Nebraska 32-28.
Oh yes, talk about quick turnarounds, if you’re still reading this, first pitch was slated for less than 12 hours after the Oklahoma loss.
