Here’s the pitch. Nebraska’s pitchers had a good weekend against Michigan at Haymarket Park, with good starts from Tucker Timmerman, Ty Horn and Jackson Brockett.
And the bullpen mostly did its job. The Huskers used only four relievers: Luke Broderick pitched in all three games, Drew Christo in two, and Will Walsh and Grant Cleavinger in one each.
It should be noted that Walsh, who had been Friday’s starter, faced seven batters in Saturday’s 5-2 Senior Day victory, all outs, including two strikeouts.
Case Sanderson hit a three-run home run, his third of the season, with one out for the walk-off victory, which came on the heels of a 3-2 victory Friday night, in which Timmerman, in his first weekend start, pitched seven innings, allowing five hits and one run, striking out five and walking one.
Hogan Helligso, who homered Saturday, drove in Friday’s winning run with a ground out in the sixth.
“We just need to continue to pitch well,” Coach Will Bolt said following Sunday’s game. “That gives you a chance to win every game. Each and every starter should feel really confident and the bullpen guys will feed off, certainly, what those guys do.”
Oh yes, Sunday’s game, Mother’s Day, the Huskers lost 3-1.
In all three games, “the starting pitching was awesome,” said Bolt. “They gave us an opportunity. If you’d have told me before the game today that we’d give up three runs on six hits, I’d said we’d get the sweep. So the pitching did their job.”
Sunday, Brockett pitched 5 1/3 innings, allowing two hits and one run — on the first of two Cole Caruso home runs — striking out three, walking one and hitting two batters.
“I though Brockett was incredible today, just in terms of his competitiveness and his attack and just not giving in,” Bolt said. “That’s what he’s done all year. He’s gotten into some situations and then wiggled his way out of it, made pitches, and I thought he was awesome.”
The same could be said of Timmerman and Horn, who gave up two runs on four hits in six innings Saturday.
“We had to play perfect today because of how bad we were offensively,” Bolt said of Sunday’s loss, which dropped Nebraska under .500 in Big Ten play, at 13-14. Even so, the Huskers, 25-25, have positioned themselves to qualify for the Big Ten Tournament.
They are tied with Rutgers for ninth going into their final regular-season season against Purdue in West Lafayette this week.
“You saw how many lazy pop-ups we did,” said Bolt. “We just didn’t make any adjustments.”
Hawks Field and Haymarket Park is “playing big,” Bolt said. “But lazy fly balls don’t carry on any day, and that’s just a lot of what it was today. When you’ve gotta finish, you have to have a certain, just, ferociousness to you … again, not that we didn’t come out to play to win.
“But there’s just a different level where we needed to be today offensively.”
Joshua Overbeek was 3-for-5, with a double, and drove in the lone run with a single in the seventh.
“Obviously a tough loss, last game at Haymarket, but we’ve got to take this weekend for what it was and beating a good Michigan team two out of three and still moving in the right direction,” Overbeek said Sunday. “That’s something … as long as we can continue to move forward and trend upwards, catch a little lightning in a bottle as we head into the Purdue series and into the Big Ten Tournament.
“We’ll see what this team can really do, because we have what we need. Still putting it together, that’s the whole thing.”
