On a beautiful Mother’s Day, Nebraska and Iowa took the field on Championship Sunday after both teams emptied the tank in one of the wildest games played at Haymarket Park last night. After the moms of the senior players threw out the first pitch, it was time for Gavin Blachowicz get to work against the Hawkeyes.
Kooper Schulte stepped into the box and sent Blachowicz’s second pitch over the fence in left-centerfield to put Iowa up 1-0 right away. Gable Mitchell then shot a double to the rightfield
gap. Blachowicz then struck out Miles Risley before Caleb Wulf rapped a single to score Mitchell. Blachowicz said that’s enough and struck out the next two Iowa batters.
Down a couple of runs, Nebraska cut the lead in half in the bottom of the first off Iowa starter Logan Runde. Mac Moyer led the game off with a single. The Big Red loaded the bases around a couple of strikeouts with a Dylan Carey single and Drew Grego getting hit by a pitch. Runde walked Joshua Overbeek and Moyer trotted across the plate. After one inning, Iowa was up 2-1.
Blachowicz sat the Hawkeyes down in order in the second and Nebraska gained the lead when they came to bat. Trey Fikes, getting his second start of the weekend, doubled to lead it off and moved to third on a Rhett Stokes sacrifice bunt. Fikes scored on a Moyer flyball to leftfield to tie the game. The Cornhuskers took the lead when Will Jesske, blasted a solo home run to left. After two innings, Nebraska was up 3-2.
After Blochowicz had another perfect inning in the third and the offense added a couple more runs with a Jett Buck home run and Trey Fikes scoring on a Rhett Stokes single. The 5-2 lead would last another inning, though Blachowicz had to work around three walks in the fourth and was fortunate to keep Iowa from crossing the plate.
Reliever Chase Olson would just as soon forget his fifth inning today. The diminutive lefty from Kansas City gave up a first pitch single to Schulte, but got a strikeout from Mitchell. However, he hit Risley to put two on with one out. It looked like he may get out of it after he fielded and tossed out Caleb Wulf’s dribbler, but then he walked Max Burt and hit Jaixen Frost to score Schulte.
Coach Childress brought in Ryan Harrahill with the bases loaded and two outs. Ben Swails smoked a single to plate two more Hawkeyes to tie the score 5-5. Harrahill struck out Mitch Wood to end the inning.
For the next few innings, Jaron Bleeker for Iowa and Colin Nowacyzk did enough to keep runs off the board. Nebraska loaded the bases in the sixth, but Bleeker was able to induce a flyball out by Jett Buck.
Perhaps the key of the game was Nowaczyk’s performance in the seventh. Iowa mounted a huge threat that could have changed the direction of the game. Nowaczyk walked Mitchell and then gave up a single to Miles Risley. Both runners advanced an extra 90-feet on an errant throw by Mac Moyer back to the infield.
With two runners in scoring position and no outs Iowa could sense that they had to take advantage of this opportunity. Nowaczyk bulled his neck and used his fastball-curveball combination to perfection, striking out Caleb Wulf, Max Burt, and Jaixen Frost, and bringing the huge red-clad crowd to their feet. The game was still knotted up 5-5.
That toughness carried over to the offense into the bottom of the inning. Stokes worked a one-out walk, but when Moyer flew out with a hard-hit ball to centerfield, it looked like the inning may be over. Up came Jesske who ripped a ground ball to third and the very reliable Jaixen Frost could not field it cleanly. That put two on with two outs and Dylan Carey stepping into the batter’s box.
With a flare for the dramatic, Carey lashed a shot that hit the base of the wall in centerfield for a double. Stokes scored easily and Jesske, with his tender hamstring, chugged around the bases and ended it with a swan dive from at least fifteen-feet to score. Carey then scored on a Drew Grego single. Nebraska took an 8-5 lead.
Nowaczyk gave up a two-out solo homer to Schulte in the top of the eighth and then after walking the next batter, Tucker Timmerman came on and finished the inning. He also closed out the game in the ninth, showing his toughness after he gave up a double to Burt and battled the next two batters, who both grounded out. Fittingly, the last one was to Dylan Carey, Ball game! Nebraska 8, Iowa 6.
Not only was this a series win and a sweep, it also concluded an unbeaten Big Ten season at home. Should it be the last game played in Haymarket Park the season, what a way for the seniors to go out, particularly Dylan Carey who has meant so much to this team over the past four years.
Colin Nowaczyk deserves a gold star today as well. He has not pitched as much as a lot of guys out of the bullpen, and certainly not that much on the weekends. He was very good today. The home run to Schulte was a blemish, but he struck out five of the ten batters he faced, and those three in a row in the seventh couldn’t have been any bigger and may have been the difference in the game.
In the B1G, the last week of the season always starts a day early, so next week Nebraska will be in Minneapolis to face the Golden Gophers on Thursday and Friday evening, and Saturday afternoon. Minnesota has had solid pitching most of the season and are in a logjam with four other teams for a spot in the conference tournament. They won a couple of games early in the season against Kansas and not that long ago took a series from Washington.
Though they sit in second place, Nebraska has not clinched a spot in the top four in the standings and a coveted quarterfinal spot in the tournament. UCLA has, but Nebraska, Southern Cal, Oregon, and Purdue are all within two games of each other, and Michigan is just one game further back.
Before heading to Minnesota, the team will travel up I-80 to Omaha on Tuesday for their final game against Creighton this year. It will be interesting to see how they use their pitching because of the shortened week for the conference games.
Notes:
- Nebraska fans showed up this weekend setting another attendance record in the Big Ten Era with 22,815 passing through the gates for the series. Today’s attendance was 7948. We need to figure out how to get Texas or LSU to come to Lincoln to get back to the good old days when you couldn’t see any grass in the berms and people were standing four deep along the fences.
- Yesterday I sang the praises of Iowa’s third baseman Jaixen Frost defensive prowess and then today he made an error. I take nothing back as it was only his second error of the season, which for a third baseman is still incredibly good.
- I’m not sure how the judge’s scored it, but that head-first dive by Will Jesske into home in the seventh inning lacked technical superiority. It was most definitely not a slide and I wonder whether he got a mouthful of dirt!
- Finally, all the respect in the world to Coach Revelle and the Cornhusker softball team. Coach Revelle is Nebraska softball and to see her team have a season like this one. How great would it be to see this bunch in Oklahoma City!
