The Nebraska baseball team will take on Oklahoma State in the first game of the Clemson regional at 11am on Friday.
While the usual draw for these kinds of regionals is that the teams who are going up against each other rarely square off, Nebraska and Oklahoma State are quite familiar with one another. The Cowboys and Huskers were once rivals in the Big 12 and before that the Big 8.
Because of this, there may not be any two teams in the NCAA Regionals that know each other as well as the Nebraska baseball team and Oklahoma State. So what can we expect when the two teams clash tomorrow?
The bad news is the Cowboys have certainly had Nebraska’s number in baseball over the many, many years. In the teams’ two histories, the Cowboys are 111-70 against the Huskers. The good news is the matchup was quite a bit more balanced once the teams both joined the Big 12.
Nebraska baseball actually holds the edge in the last 15 years. NU was 24-20 against OSU, thanks in large part to the Big 12 years being the ones when Dave Van Horn took the school on its best run. This year, the teams appear to be about as even a match as there is out there. The Cornhuskers finished the regular season and conference tournament with a 37-20 record while the Cowboys finished 36-20.
The two teams also finished second in their respective conferences. The two squads even unexecpetedly struggled in their conference tournaments. Oklahoma State did do a bit better in that they won a single game in the Big 12 tourney while the Nebraska baseball team struggled to score runs, OSU’s problems were more of the pitcher variety.
The big question mark for the Cornhuskers is going to be whether or not Scott Schreiber is able to play. As of Thursday afternoon, Darin Erstad had said he thought his first baseman was progressing and that there was a new spark in his eyes. That doesn’t mean he’s actually going to play on Friday but it’s clear Erstad is hoping his slugger will be back.
If he’s not, the Nebraska baseball team is going to have to find an answer for their offensive woes. After looking like they were among the best offensive teams in the country the last few weeks of the season, it became quite pedestrian post Schreiber injury.
With Schreiber or without, the Huskers are going to have problems scoring runs, as they’ll face off against one of the best pitchers in the Big 12. Thomas Hatch takes the ball for the Cowboys following a regular season where he went 6-2 with a team leading 2.31 earned run average. The Cornhuskers will counter with one of the Big 10’s best pitchers in Matt Waldron.
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Waldron posted a 7-2 record with a sparkling 2.39 earned run average of his own. While the pitching has been a strength towards the end of the year, the Nebraska baseball team is going to need to find a way to score runs if it wants to do better than 0-2 in the Regionals.