Husker Baseball Outlasts Creighton, 6-5

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Chase Olson throws against K State | Nebraska Athletics

It was a tale of two games between Nebraska and Creighton. The two in-state rivals always seem to play games that have wild momentum swings in the late innings. Tuesday night in downtown Omaha was no different.

Nebraska put its offense to work in the 2nd inning. Dylan Carey led off and sent a pitch deep to right, forcing the Creighton right fielder to make the catch with his back against the fence. It was an out, but a harbinger of things to come for the Jays. Jett Buck reached on an error, with the first baseman dropping the ball. Then Max Buettenback was hit by the next pitch. Clearly rattled, the CU starting pitcher tossed a wild pitch to the backstop, allowing both runners to advance into scoring position.

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Freshman Drew Grego, who has been as clutch as anyone in the past month, punched a ball just in front of the left fielder. The runners had to hesitate due to it being a close play, so only Buck could score on the play. After a strikeout, Josh Overbeek drew a full count walk, loading the bases for Mac Moyer. The left handed Moyer hit his patented ball right by the short stop, scoring Buettenback and Grego. Moyer ended the game batting .404, just barely hanging onto the team lead over Carey at .403. Nebraska took the early 3-0 lead.

Husker nation held their collective breaths in the 3rd. With 1 out, Dylan Carey was hit by pitch on his left wrist. He was seen by the trainer and was in noticeable pain. The call was reviewed to ensure he was hit and the ball didn’t hit the cap of the bat for a foul ball, giving him a bit more time to recover. In true Carey fashion and grit, he stole second base on the next pitch, sliding headfirst, wrist injury be damned…. Two pitches later, Jett Buck split the right center gap for a double, scoring Carey easy, and pushing the Husker lead to 4-0.

Freshman catcher Jeter Worthley showed off all of his offensive skills in the 4th. He rocketed a ball down the left field line for a standup double. He then advanced to third base on a fly ball by Case Sanderson. Carey then lifted a ball to shallow center. The Jays centerfielder caught it and as Worthley tagged and ran home, threw a strike to the catcher who couldn’t hang onto the ball, as Worthley slid by him and knocked the ball out of his glove. Worthley stopped his slide, stood up and stepped on home plate for the Huskers fifth run.

Gavin Blachowicz was making his first mid-week start of the season, and rolled through his 4 innings of work, allowing only 2 hits, and 1 walk while striking out 2. He was on a pitch count after getting the last week off, but looked like he was close to the pitcher we saw early on in the season.

Nebraska built their lead to 6-0 in the 6th, as Creighton’s left fielder misplayed a ball off the bat of Josh Overbeek. Beek motored all the way to third for his second triple in the past week. Moyer would bring him in with an RBI ground ball to the first baseman, his 3rd RBI of the game.

Caleb Clark had come in to relieve Blachowicz, and after a quick 5th, ran into a lot of trouble in the 6th. A walk, hit by pitch, and 4 pitch walk loaded the bases with no outs. He gave up a 2 RBI double, before being pulled for Pryce Bender. Bender seemed to right the ship with a strikeout and a hard hit ball to Overbeek at third, which he gunned down a runner attempting to run home. The next batter hit a 2-0 fastball for a 2 RBI double, and then an RBI single cut the Nebraska lead down to 6-5.

Nebraska looked to respond in the 7th, starting the inning with back to back singles. Three hard hit balls, all coming off the bat at over 90 mph, all found the gloves of Creighton fielders. Creighton was hanging on.

The bullpens held through the 8th, and into the 9th. Nebraska was able to get a pair of 1 out singles from Sanderson and Carey to put the pressure on. Creighton went and grabbed their closer, Matt Goldenbaum, and he slammed the door shut with back to back strikeouts of Buck and Buettenback.

Husker closer J’Shawn Unger had come in to work a spotless 8th, but an error by the usual sure handed Rhett Stokes at second allowed leadoff batter Rocco Gump to reach base. The speedy Gump stole second. Unger struck out the next batter. The next batter hit a fly ball to left, and as Buck hauled it in, Gump had wandered off second a little too far. Buck threw to second and beat Gump back, but was just far enough towards the third base side of the bag that it pulled Stokes off the bag just by a hair, allowing the inning to continue. Unger walked the next batter, bringing up Ben North, Creighton’s best hitter with the winning run on base. North hit a towering fly ball to left center, which Moyer called off Buck, but had overran the play a bit and drifted back towards center field, and as the fans held their collective breath, caught the ball for the final out of the 6-5 victory.

Nebraska has now won 18 of their last 19 games, and in a rare occurrence in that streak, the offense was unable to come up with a clutch hit in the late innings with runners on base. Making the response after the nightmare of a 6th inning even more important. Chase Olson and Unger combined to throw 3 innings of no-hit baseball in a crucial 1 run rivalry game. They are both pitching as well as anyone coming in relief in the scarlet and cream.

The 19th ranked Huskers are back in action Friday as an underachieving Penn State team comes to Lincoln to start a 3 game series. It’s an important series to pile up wins as the next two conference series are against ranked teams in Oregon and USC.

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