Will Bolt had no comment on the Big Ten Tournament next week in Omaha.
“Well, I don’t really want to talk about the conference tournament right now because we’re not there,” he said Wednesday morning. “We still have a weekend (series) to go win … so I’m not going to get that much into conference tournament talk right now.”
The Huskers will play three games against Purdue in West Lafayette, beginning Thursday at 5 p.m. CDT. Big Ten series are starting Thursday instead of Friday because the conference tournament begins Tuesday. The top 12 teams qualify. But enough of that.
“We’re looking at this weekend as must-win … like we’re looking at each game that we need to win,” said Bolt. “We need to do whatever it takes to win, so we’re not … looking ahead. We know we need to just go and play well this weekend and see what happens from there.”
Nebraska is 13-14 in conference play and tied with Rutgers for ninth. Purdue is 10-17 and 15th.
“We’ve kind of been in playoff mode for the last month,” Bolt said.
The Huskers have won consecutive Big Ten series against Northwestern, Maryland, Minnesota and Michigan. “So the experience is starting to kind of shine through, I think, in those situations where we’ve played our best baseball here in the last month,” he said.
“We had to come out of some early-season stuff with injuries and just the long road trips and stuff. And we’ve played really well here at the end. A lot of that has to do with experience.”
The “experience” to which he referred included what veteran players learned last season, when they came back from a 15-2 loss to Ohio State in the opening game to win the Big Ten Tournament.
But again, Bolt’s focus is on this season and what the Huskers have accomplished.
One concern offensively is “we’re not collecting a lot of consecutive good at-bats. That’s what it takes, crooked numbers early because that’s what you’re seeing late in the games, right? Seventh, eighth, ninth innings, we’re putting together multiple really good at-bats in a row,” he said.
Right-hander Carter Doorn (4-5, 5.04 ERA) is slated to start Thursday’s game, matched against the Huskers’ Tucker Timmerman (2-1, 3.55). Friday’s starters are Ty Horn (2-4, 5.97) for Nebraska and right-hander Cole Van Assen (4-3, 4.13) while Saturday’s are Jackson Brockett (2-3, 3.76) and Easton Storey (4-2, 5.01).
At the plate the Boilermakers are led by Lukas Cook, who’s hitting .402, and Logan Sutter, who’s hitting .375 with 14 home runs, 61 runs-batted-in and 36 walks. Purdue is hitting .289 as a team.
Both teams have hit 54 home runs. Nebraska’s leader, Tyler Stone with eight, was sidelined after being hit by a pitch in the Michigan series but will travel to Purdue, said Bolt, “so hopefully we can get him ready to go.” Max Buettenback, sidelined but not by injury, will not make the trip.
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Timmerman was the subject of questions Wednesday morning regarding his recent return from a serious facial injury in the second game of the season, a 6-4 victory against Vanderbilt. In his first weekend start, Friday night against Michigan, the sophomore right-hander from Beatrice, Nebraska, allowed five hits and one run, walking one and striking out five to earn the victory.
Despite the seriousness of the injury, Timmerman tried to fire up his teammates and fans as he left the mound. “The way he came off the mound that day, pumping his fist and blood coming down his face and some of those things that you didn’t anticipate him being out for two months, right? That just goes to show how mentally and physically tough that kid is, that he’s doing that in that moment where he’s obviously in a lot of pain,” Bolt said.
“He had broken bones all over his face, nose, eye … there was a long road back, where again, we went to sleep that night thinking we may be without him for a short amount of time.”
That could have been a season-ending injury for some, but “for him to be able to come back in two months was a testament to who he is,” said Bolt.
And Timmerman hasn’t just come back, he’s continued to have an impact.
