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Baseball season finished for Nebraska, Creighton
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It seems a bit odd that the state where College Baseball’s champion is crowned has no teams preparing to compete for that honor. In fact it seems downright criminal. Lately it’s been downright unheard of.
Only once in the last decade has neither the Bluejays or the Huskers reached at least the regional playoffs. 2003 was the last time both teams missed the postseason, and while Nebraska has carried much of the water in making sure at least one team from the state had a chance to go to Omaha and play for all the Marbles; this year the state’s hopes rested on Creighton and for a while, it appeared Creighton would answer the call.
The Bluejays roared out to a fantastic start to the season, and for a while looked as though even if they didn’t win the MVC outright, they would get an at-large bid to the regional tournament. However six straight losses to end the regular season assured the team that they would need to win the conference tournament to make the post season.
Bouncing back from it’s worst stretch of the season, Creighton opened the MVC round robin with a win over Southern Illinois, and then a blowout, 11-0 seven inning win over Wichita State.
Their extra inning win over top seeded Missouri State was the perfect illustration of the kind of fight that propelled them to the cusp of the MVC Conference title. Creighton took a 2-0 lead in the first, but immediately allowed the Bears to tie it in their half of the opening inning. The Bluejays then took a 3-2 lead in the top of the second, but surrendered the lead by allowing two runs in the bottom of the third. CU then tied and took the lead thanks to runs in the fifth and sixth innings. Missouri State tied the game at 5 with a run in the bottom of the seventh, and it stayed that way until the top of the 10th, when Robbie Knight hit a two run single, allowing Creighton to take a 7-5 lead. After allowing the Bears to score a run and make it 7-6, the Jays shut the door, and advanced to the conference title game.
Unfortunately for Creighton the bats that swept them to the mercy rule win over Wichita in their second game were silent in the final game. Creighton’s pitching staff once again turned in a solid performance, until the Shockers finally broke the game open in the bottom of the seventh, thanks to three singles, and an RBI groundout. Creighton managed a run in the top of the eighth but was stopped from scoring any more despite having runners on second and third with no out. The Shockers held on to win 4-2, and won the conference’s only bid in the NCAA postseason tournament.
Nebraska’s story was much different. After spending so many seasons at the top of the college baseball world, the Huskers hit a serious bump in the road with their first losing season in over a decade, and despite a final weekend sweep of the NCAA Regional bound Baylor Bears, finished last in the Big 12, and failed to make the conference tournament.
It was truly a bad year for Nebraska to bottom out, as almost any Big 12 team that posted a winning record was selected to go to the Regionals. A conference record eight teams were selected from the conference, including the aforementioned Baylor, and an Oklahoma State team that finished just 1.5 games ahead of Nebraska in the conference standings.
Both Nebraska and Creighton ended up the season playing some of their best baseball of the season, and fans from the only two division one baseball programs in the state will almost certainly expected top notch performances from both schools in 2010.
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