Husker season ends on a sour note
After finishing the regular season strong, winning 15 of their last 19 games and finishing in second place in the Big Ten conference, Nebraska ended their season today on a forgettable note losing to Western Carolina 4-1.
The Huskers went two and barbecue in both the BIG conference tournament and the NCAA Regionals while being outscored 21-4. Two weather delays added to the day's frustrations.
"It's just really unfortunate," Coach Darin Erstad began his post-game comments. "You know, they gave us quite a few opportunities early to get some stuff done, but we just picked the absolute wrong time to go ice cold with the bats. I tried to make adjustments and help them out, and I couldn't get them to pull the right strings.
"Ultimately, it's on me because I wasn't able to get them to make the adjustments and that dirty snowball started rolling down the hill. Man, that confidence thing is just so precious in college sports. We could just not get it turned around in the post-season."
Jake Meyers gave the Cornhuskers five innings of starting pitching, giving up a single tally in the first, before a weather delay ended his day on the mound.
Scott Schreiber's lingering injury exposed NU's feckless and anemic offensive attack toward the end of the season.
"When teams have it rolling and they are playing with confidence, those plays don't happen to them," Erstad stated. "But that's what happens in the game of baseball. By not hitting and by not getting guys on base consistently over the last couple of weeks, a lot of those little things get exposed.
"We had opportunities early, especially when they played so late. They come out and give us six walks in the first two innings and we don't do anything with it. There was a chance right there to get a huge lead and be able to roll, but unfortunately, offensively it just was not in the cards the last six games."
Nebraska hit into five double plays today, and in spite of being the beneficiary of eight walks and two errors by Western Carolina, only managed five hits and a single run on the day.
"From an offensive standpoint, we've seen many times this year that we got a couple hits in a row and 'boom' you get it rolling," Erstad said of his team's offensive futility during the last several games. "Well, we had a couple spells this year where the other way happened. We've got to make sure that we're fighting through that and getting to the next pitch.
"We did a great job pitching wise of making the adjustment as the season went on. Offensively, I thought we had that figured out a little bit where we turned the corner and we were swinging the bat real well down the stretch, and then those last couple of games against Indiana, and then the four tournament games, is just, I mean, you can't get any colder."
Nebraska played like it was outclassed and didn't deserve a post-season at large bid and relegated them to an off-season of questions about the future direction of the program.
"If you ever think that you're sweet or that you really, really good, you need a reality check and we need to get a lot better," Erstad stressed. "Staying humble and understanding that every game, every pitch is so precious, and every rep is so precious.
"The emotions of learning how to handle your mental side of things and your breathing when things go bad, being able to get rid of that and not let that snow ball."
With their four straight post-season defeats, Nebraska finished their season with a 37-22 record in Coach Darin Erstad's fifth season at the helm in Lincoln.
NU has reached the Big Ten tournament in each of Coach Erstad's five season as the Huskers' head coach, as well as reached the NCAA Regionals two of the last three seasons. Nebraska had one win in their 2014 Regional over Binghamton.