Huskers survive selection Monday and will get one more chance
It was hard not to get into the selection show drama on Monday if you were associated with the Nebraska Baseball program.
Before this past week’s Big Ten Conference Tournament in Omaha, most if not all projections had the Huskers (37-20) squarely in the field of 64.
Then NU went 0-2 in the tournament and saw their RPI on NCAA.com drop from 36 to 48 over the course of a week. On Monday four of the five major NCAA Tournament projections had Nebraska “out” of the field of 64. That included D1Baseball.com, which last year accurately projected all 64 of the teams in the field.
Nobody had a good feel on what was going to happen on Monday, including a press box full of reporters watching the selection show at Hawks Field. Then as the final third of the bracket began to be unveiled on ESPNU the Huskers saw their name appear as a 3-seed in the Clemson regional. NU will play 2-seeded Oklahoma State (36-20) at 11 am CST on Friday in Clemson, South Carolina.
“After going 0-2 in (the Big Ten) Tournament and not knowing if that was going to be my last game or not, sitting there with the other seniors wondering what the heck was going to happen, it’s a lot of relief,” senior third basemen Jake Placzek said. “It’s a huge rock off some of our shoulders.”
Nebraska (RPI 48) got one of the final spots over teams like Oregon State (44), Michigan (38), North Carolina (19), Creighton (46) and West Virginia (61).
The Big Ten as a conference got three teams in overall, as both Ohio State and Minnesota will join the Huskers this weekend in regional play as 2 seeds in their respective brackets.
“I think everyone was (a bracket expert),” sophomore Luis Alvarado joked. “This morning we weren’t in any of the projections, so it was really nerve wrecking.”
For NU head coach Darin Erstad, getting into a regional for the second time in the last three years helps solidifies what he’s trying to build at Nebraska.
You could actually argue the Huskers have been regional material three out of the last four years, as in 2013 they had an RPI of 31, but failed to make the field being one game under .500.
“It’s very, very important,” Erstad said in making the regionals two of the last three years. “You have to get your foot in the door. Obviously I know the expectations here are to go to the College World Series. That’s been done and that’s what’s expected and I love every bit of that.
“Four years ago we had a record under .500, but we had a chance of getting in by winning the championship and knocking off Indiana twice, and we got walked off in the second game. The following year we had a pretty good year. Last year we had a lot of expectations and we finished poorly. This year there weren’t a lot of expectations and we finished strong. To be in that discussion and to have that opportunity is vital for our program to have that.”
Around the horn
***Erstad remains optimistic about first basemen Scott Schreiber being back in the line-up for Friday. Schreiber has missed the last four games with an abdominal injury.
“He’s slowly moving around,” Erstad said of Schreiber said. “He’s progressing. We’ve got a few days. He’s obviously very excited today and wants to get out there and move around and we are going to have to try and move him down. The pool workout today went really well, so it’s heading in the right direction.”
***Erstad joked he was a big Ohio State fan on Sunday, but sure enjoyed watching the Big Ten championship between Iowa and the Buckeyes. OSU winning helped the Huskers get in the field of 64.
“That was an amazing baseball game,” Erstad said. “I’ll put that game up against any game in the country. That was an unbelievable baseball game. High intensity. As a baseball fan, that was a lot of fun to watch.”
***Of the 16 regional hosts, 14 of them fall in the footprint of the SEC and ACC Conferences, with Louisiana-Lafayette being the only non-ACC or SEC team to get a host spot in that part of the country. The other two host spots were awarded to the state of Texas and the Big 12 Conference. No teams in the Mountain or Pacific time zones will host a regional this year. Erstad had his own take on this.
“All I’ve heard is ‘the West is down’ and they put the hosts where the best teams are,” Erstad said. “If that’s truly the case, then OK, I’m fine with that. I’m all about the best teams getting in and the best teams hosting. Now we’ll see how many end up in Omaha. Obviously it’s an advantage if you are hosting. That’s what everybody strives for.
"You also look on the flip side of this and you have a lot of angry West Coast teams that are coming with a chip on their shoulder that can play really good baseball. I’m just really curious how it all plays out, because there’s two sides of how you want to look at it. Those West Coast teams coming across the country with a chip on their shoulder can be dangerous.”
***NU is tentatively scheduled to leave for Clemson on Wednesday.