Huskers win game 1 over No. 24 Michigan State
Nebraska used six pitchers and stranded ten runners, but took advantage of four Michigan State errors to top the the No. 24 ranked Spartans 6-3 in Game 1 of an important conference series.
It's NU's final conference road series before hosting their last two B1G series at home. Nebraska is attempting to secure a spot in Omaha and these next three weekends will tell the tale.
The Huskers got off to a fast start in the first inning by scoring two runs off of RBI hits by Jake Meyers and Ben Miller. NU been built their lead to 5-1 after five innings.
Derek Burkamper threw 5.1 strong innings, only giving up one hit and one run, before tiring in the sixth. Jeff Chestnut came in to relieve him and induced a double-play on one pitch to end the inning.
"We tried to keep Jeff Chesnut's pitch count down and the next inning we played match up," Coach Darin Erstad said. "We didn't want another right hander to face the three-hole hitter, so we went with (Garett) King and then (Jake) McSteen and it didn't work out. And then, Reece (Eddins) walked a guy, and then all of a sudden you've got to Chad (Luensmann) get hot.
"Chad did what Chad did, so it was a fun win. It was huge that he only had to throw three pitches in that first inning we brought him in. He ended up with, I think, 20 [pitches] total, but he has been huge for us. He's had some situations he had to get out of, but he's done a very nice job and he found a way again today.
Seniors Steven Reveles and Jake Placzek both had big two out hits on the day which gave Nebraska some breathing room.
"Yeah, they both had huge hits," Erstad noted. "Rev down there at the bottom of the order has just been fantastic, and Placzek's batting average today of putting balls in play was .1000. Those guys are huge."
Nebraska did not score in the final three frames, and Michigan State tried to rally, but freshman closer Chad Luensmann secured the win with his 10th save of the season.
"You've got a quality team that's not going to go away," Erstad said. "We had some opportunities there when we had a 6-1 lead and I didn't like those couple innings. I thought we got a little flat with out bats. Like, 'hey we got this thing' and you knew at some point they were going to make a push and they did."
Former Omaha Westside Warrior staandouts Matt Waldron and Jake Meyers will get the starts on Saturday and Sunday respectively, and if NU can win at least one of those games it will give them considerable momentum heading into a conference home stand to finish off the regular season.
"This is that time of year, man, you've got to have your boys step up," Coach Erstad stressed. "This is that time. The boys have got to do what they do."
Around the horn
***Nebraska has won 7 of their last 9 games.
***Jeff Chesnut tied a Nebraska baseball record with his 82nd appearance today.
***Ryan Boldt had his 18th multi-hit game of the year, including his team-high 11th three-hit performance. After going 11 straight games without a multi-hit day, Boldt has done it in each of his last two games.
***MSU’s bullpen limited the Huskers to just one hit, a double by Boldt, over the final four innings.
***Scott Schreiber was hit on the hand by a pitch and Coach Darin Erstad commented on the severity of it:
"Yeah, I mean, you move it around and you don't know. He's pretty sore. We had him bunt a couple times to, hopefully, try to trick them into letting him swing the bat there and he hit one to second and actually got the whole thing started, pretty much. So we will see where he's at, but I'm sure he'll be day today."
***Game 2 of the series will start at 12:05 pm on Sunday.