The Nebraska Cornhuskers baseball team just couldn’t find a way to break through in a must win against Maryland and now their season is likely over.
First things first. Maryland is a better baseball team than I gave them credit for. Their offense is solid and their pitching staff is better than I expected. At least, I assume their pitching is better than I realized. Because the Terps staff absolutely dominated the Nebraska Cornhuskers offense.
After scoring just one run in the Thursday night matchup against Maryland, the Nebraska baseball followed up that heartbreaker by scoring no runs on Saturday afternoon. One has to wonder how much of their struggles can be attributed to knowing that if they won the first game, they’d have to do it all over again just an hour later.
When they finished their Friday night game, there was a chance they’d get a longer wait to regroup and refresh if Michigan beat Iowa in the morning game. That would have meant a second Huskers vs Terps game wouldn’t have been played until 9. Instead, Iowa is headed to the Big Ten Tournament championship against Maryland.
Nebraska Cornhuskers’ offense bottoms out
It hasn’t been a good tournament for the NU offense by any stretch. They finished the four-game swing with a team batting average of .189. It’s volumes worse if you take out the contributions by Max Anderson who hit .421 in the tourney. Without his 8 hits in 19 ABs, the Huskers hit just .148 in their four-games
Though it’s much worse against the Terapins. Versus the number one seed in the tourney, a team that is absolutely not known for pitching, NU hit just .143 and struck out 21 times in 19 innings.
Perhaps the weirdest part was the approach even in games where the offense scored some runs that seemed timid. Lots of taking the first pitch jus to take it. Especially by the second time Maryland got to see the Nebraska Cornhuskers, it appeared Will Bolt’s boys were taking “get me over” pitches to start the at-bat down a strike.
Almost as though the team wanted to break their fans’ hearts just one more time, by allowing Maryland relief pitcher Nigel Belgrave to walk three straight batters. Thanks to a bases loaded, no out situation, the Huskers were able to coax two runs. Then a strike-out, a pop out and a Max Anderson fly out that fell three feet away from the fence ended the season with a 4-2 loss.
For the team’s head coach and his players, it’s going to be a long summer and fall of wondering what could have been. There was a time when they looked like one of the better teams in the country. Remember when they beat Vanderbilt?