Coach Will Bolt’s post-game interview on Huskers.com Sunday was brief, barely a minute, understandably so. The Nebraska baseball team had just been swept by UCLA in Los Angeles.
Sunday’s score was 5-3, Saturday’s 11-3, Friday’s 5-2
What more need be said?
Nebraska led 3-0 after three innings Sunday, on a two-run double by Dylan Carey and a sacrifice fly by Tyler Stone, who homered on Saturday. But three innings later, the Bruins led 5-3.
“When their counterpunch came, there was no punch-back on our side offensively,” Bolt said. “And it’s tough to win when you score three runs in a game in conference play. And honestly, that’s kind of about where it boils down to right now.”
With the score tied at 3, UCLA led off the sixth inning with four-consecutive hits, the first a home run by Jarrod Hocking, his first of the season and the Bruins’ sixth of the series.
The Huskers went to Los Angeles hoping to build on a three-game winning streak, beginning with a Big Ten win against Washington, after losing twice to the Huskies.
Nebraska, picked to finish second in the conference, is now 1-5 in league play, 7-11 overall. The Huskers are scheduled to play two games at Pepperdine before a weekend, Big Ten series at USC.
“I mean, we just have to be better,” said Bolt. “At the end of the day it wasn’t a mindset thing. We came out with a lead the last two games, but just the staying … on it when it came to offensively, especially because you have to play perfect defense when you don’t score a lot.”
The Huskers scored a run in the first inning of Saturday’s game, but that lead was wiped out big time when UCLA scored three runs in the fourth and six runs in the fifth.
An error factored into the Bruins’ offensive onslaught.
When the offense isn’t clicking, “you’ve got to make perfect pitches,” Bolt said.
And Nebraska’s offense wasn’t clicking sufficiently. The Huskers’ two-strike hitting “is not good enough,” Bolt said. “We’re striking out way too much.”
Nebraska struck out 32 times in the three games, including the first four batters and five of the first six outs Sunday. “That was kind of the difference (in the series),” said Bolt.
His post-game interview on Huskers.com Saturday was brief, too, lasting just under 2 minutes.
“The game’s obviously testing us,” he said. “It’s a tough game, built for tough people, and there’s a lot of moments when games go sideways on us, that we’re not very tough.
“At the end of the day, it’s all about how you compete.”
Carey was 4-for-10 with three runs-batted-in, the double and a run scored in the three games. Stone was 4-for-12, with the home run, two doubles and four RBIs.
Competing offensively means “we’ve got to have more quality at-bats, just setting up innings and each guy having … doing his job,” Bolt said.
He could have said the same thing on Sunday, or Friday.
