Nebraska baseball: ‘Sluggish’ performance underlines what’s wrong with Huskers

The Nebraska baseball team is on the brink of seeing any chance of a postseason wiped out. After Saturday’s win “sluggish” was once again mentioned as the prevailing emotion to start the game.

The Nebraska baseball team lost 6-3 on Saturday to the Indiana Hoosiers. Considering how many times the Cornhuskers have lost this season (25 times now) the loss itself isn’t a surprise.

What has to be a bit of a mystery is how Husker players can, at this point in the season, still describe the way they came into a pivotal game as “sluggish.” It’s also more than a little bit concerning.

Focus and fire has been a problem an awful lot this year. Every time the team looks like it’s finally figured things out, as it looked like it had in a sweep of Nevada last weekend, they take two steps back. That was evidenced in a mid-week loss to Creighton.

That pattern showed itself again this weekend. The Huskers rallied to topple the Hoosiers in the first game of this series, looking like they might find a way to surge into the Big Ten tournament.

Then, as NU third baseman Luke Roskam said, “We were a little sluggish, so it’s just a matter of coming out tomorrow and trying to get a win on senior day.”

While the sentiment about getting a win on Senior day is a good one, it’s the shrugging off coming out sluggish that confounds. Yes, it’s hard to have perfect focus over the course of a long season.

When you’re talking about the stretch run, about attempting to make the postseason, it seems like there should be a pool of focus the team could tap into. Instead it looks more and more like they’re just playing out the string.

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The Nebraska baseball loss on Saturday, paired with action around the Big Ten this weekend has the Cornhuskers on the brink. They are now 1.5 games behind eighth place, which is where they need to be to make the Big Ten tournament. Maryland’s three-game win streak has them leapfrogging the Huskers. That means a Sunday win is a must, followed by quite a bit of help by others.