Rewind to Saturday, late afternoon at Great Park in Irvine, California. Nebraska trails USC in the top of the ninth inning 5-4. The Huskers have runners at second and third, with two outs. Devin Nunez is batting, with a 3-2 count. He singles up the middle, driving in two runs for a 6-5 lead.
Now bottom of the ninth, USC has runners at first and second, no one out. Nebraska reliever Luke Broderick gets a strikeout, then gets the next batter to pop up to shortstop Dylan Carey. The umpire signals “infield fly.” Carey lets the ball drop. The Trojan baserunner, not realizing the “infield fly” rule is in play, runs to third base because of the drop. Carey throws him out. Game over, Nebraska wins 6-5.
USC closer Ethan Hedges, who has a Big Ten-best six saves, pitched to Nunez.
“Man, to finish the way we did, too, just a crazy baseball game,” Coach Will Bolt said on Huskers.com afterward. “Glad to get on the right side of that one.”
Friday, the Huskers lost to USC 5-3. So “we needed a change in narrative, is what we needed to do,” Bolt said after Saturday’s victory. “The difference today is, we didn’t go away offensively like we did yesterday. We kept fighting, kept fighting, kept fighting … you take a lot of momentum into Sunday when their closer comes in the game and you take him down.”
Whatever momentum the Huskers came away with Saturday was gone Sunday. They were nearly shut out, losing 7-1 to drop to 2-9 in Big Ten play and 10-13 overall.
Nebraska faltered in all three phases of the game Bolt said during his brief post-game interview Sunday. The Huskers didn’t get it done on the mound, “we didn’t swing the bats well enough, and we didn’t play good defense,” according to Bolt.
“You get your butt kicked when that happens.”
USC starter Grant Govel was 1-2 with an 8.16 earned-run-average. He had given up 17 hits and 13 runs, all earned, in 14 1/3 innings. He went five scoreless innings, allowing four hits, walking none and striking out four to earn the victory. The Huskers’ lone run came in the eighth on a Cayden Brumbaugh sacrifice fly. They struck out nine times and committed two errors.
“I think we were 0-for-9, -10, with runners in scoring position,” said Bolt. “You’re not going to win when you do that. You’re not going to win when you make a couple of errors and you don’t slug to make up for it. You’re not going to win when you can’t stop ‘em on the mound.”
Nebraska seemed to have momentum going into the USC series, after winning a pair of mid-week games at Pepperdine. But that didn’t hold either. In Friday’s loss, the Huskers managed only five hits, including doubles by Carey, who drove in two runs, and Tyler Stone, who drove in one.
Carey also doubled and drove in two runs, as did Joshua Overbeek, Saturday.
Nebraska, picked to finish second in the Big Ten, is next-to-last, ahead of only 0-5 Ohio State. The Huskers finish their lengthy road trip at Kansas State Tuesday before returning home for a three-game, nonconference, weekend series against eighth-ranked Oregon State.
Nebraska has seven conference series remaining, 21 conference games, to get things turned around. The Huskers need to rebuild Saturday’s momentum quickly, and hold it.
“It doesn’t have to be pretty. It doesn’t have to be perfect,” Bolt said Saturday.
“It just has to be together.”
