Around the Horn: Nebraska baseball looks to stop skid against Maryland

It hasn’t been close to Nebraska baseball’s ideal start to April.

Right-handed starting pitcher Mason McConnaughey’s rise has been one of the bright spots. The reigning Big Ten Pitcher of the Week knows he and his teammates are being tested.

“It’s the game,” McConnaughey said. “It’s trying to send us a message right now and it’s really trying to see how we respond. Whether we stay connected as a team, whether we have each other’s back still because I have 100% confidence in each and every arm out of our bullpen, out of our starting rotation and same with the bats. I trust them to go in and do their job as much as they trust me. So, really just trying to hone in on loving each other and staying connected throughout the rest of the season.”

The Maryland Terrapins (24-14, 5-7) represent the Huskers’ next challenge. Here’s more on Nebraska’s home stand, a Maryland team under first-year head coach Matt Swope with a propensity for the dramatic and things the Huskers hope to alter to right the ship.

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Projecting Nebraska’s pitching matchups

Friday, 6:05 p.m., RHP Brett Sears (Stats: 6-0, 1.32 ERA, 61.1 IP, 60 K) vs. RHP Logan Koester (Stats: 4-4, 5.83 ERA, 46.1 IP, 24 K)

Saturday, 2:02 p.m., RHP Mason McConnaughey (Stats: 4-2, 2.29 ERA, 35.1 IP, 45 K) Vs. TBA

Sunday, 12:05 p.m., TBA Vs. RHP Joey McMannis (0-0, 3.41 ERA, 37.0 IP, 25 K)

What to watch for the Huskers

Dealing with NU’s rough stretch

Nebraska head coach Will Bolt announced the Huskers will make at least one major change this weekend. He did not declare a Sunday starter. Much of who gets the nod will be based on how Friday and Saturday’s games play out.

Bolt added there could be some movement regarding bullpen roles as well. However, the main cast of arms tasked with handling high-leverage innings will likely remain the same according to the skipper. Bolt said Kyle Perry has partially been a victim of some “hit-it-where-they’re-not” at-bats, but he’s given up some solid contact, too. Failing to log strikeouts in critical situations has been a shortcoming as well.

It’s been a mixed bag offensively at times, too. Nebraska has scored first and had a lead in each of its last five games. Four of those five have ended in losses.

“That’s the good and the bad of it,” Bolt said. “When we’re finishing those games off what it has looked like earlier in the season was we were either scoring to extend leads or we were stopping the other team from scoring in the middle innings.”

Winning the middle innings will be key this weekend. Bolt added that stretching leads in that portion of the game to avoid a nail-biter in the late innings is another important piece going forward.

Talking Terps ahead of a continued critical home stand

Nebraska’s next seven games are at home. Six of those seven are against Big Ten opponents that were picked to finish ahead of the Huskers in the conference’s preseason poll.

“We need to get that winning feeling back again,” Bolt said. “We’ve had leads, we’ve scored first, we’ve done a lot of good things. But, I just think having some games where we make our own breaks, that seems to happen at home more than on the road it seems like. Hopefully, we’ll have some great crowds here, too that’ll help.”

Maryland has certainly become used to winning over the last five years.

A Terrapin streak of 23 consecutive conference series wins came to a close earlier this season at Michigan. The run began under the culture established by former Maryland head coach Rob Vaughn who is now the head coach at Alabama. Bolt described it as a culture of winning in which the team feels it can prevail every time it takes the field. That’s something Nebraska is trying to recapture.

Of course, there’s another meaningful component.

“Ultimately what it comes down to is roster though,” Bolt said. “Is the lineup deep enough to go score? Is the pitching strong enough to hold up on a Sunday? Do you have a closer that can go finish? Those are things they’ve had in spades. For the last several years, they’ve had the most talent probably up and down in the Big Ten and with that comes wins.”

At the beginning of the year and throughout the month of March, Nebraska was able to check almost all of those boxes. Not so in April. The Huskers will need to find that winning feeling again during the next week and a half.

Data Dive: McConnaughey and Sears compared to other Big Ten Pitchers of the Week

Brett Sears and McConnaughey have been remarkably efficient this year. They’re the first Husker starting rotation duo to win back-to-back Big Ten Pitcher of the Week awards since Cade Povich and Chance Hroach in 2021.

The two represent the top ERAs in the conference and have 105 combined strikeouts in 96 2/3 innings of work.

For this week’s Data Dive, I decided to take a look at how these two NU arms compare to the rest of the Big Ten Weekly Award honorees in strikeout-free pass ratio. Anything that gives a batter or a base runner a free base is included. That means walks, hit batters, wild pitches and balks. The green dot stands for strikeouts while the line or gap in between is a broad representation of efficiency.

Unsurprisingly, McConnaughey and Sears are tied with Rutgers’ Justin Sinibaldi for the lowest amount of free passes in the group at 15.

Sears has the widest gap between free passes and strikeouts of the group. McConnaughey is third behind Sinibaldi. Only Christian Coppola and Cade Obermueller have issued more free passes than strikeouts this season. Connor Foley is second in the Big Ten with 65 strikeouts. Iowa’s Brody Brecht leads the conference at 72.

Nebraska baseball notes

***Dylan Carey is batting .300 with two doubles and three home runs in his last 10 games. Meanwhile, Ben Columbus is batting a cool .476 with eight RBIs, a double and two home runs in the same stretch.

***Josh Caron paces the Huskers with 12 multi-hit efforts this season. He has recorded a hit in 15 of his last 16 games.

***Dallas Baptist’s Ryan Johnson is the only pitcher nationwide to match Brett Sears’ streak of eight consecutive quality starts.

***Riley Silva is the first Husker since Alex Gordon in 2005 to steal more than 20 bases in a season.

Know the foe: Maryland

***Of Maryland’s 24 wins this season, 11 have come in the midst of the Terrapins last at-bats. Maryland is outscoring its opponents 63-29 in the eighth inning or later. The Terrapins have completed 13 comebacks on the year and are 11-3 in one-run games.

***Reliever Logan Berrier owns a 2.70 ERA with 27 strikeouts and a 7-1 record. His seven victories are the fourth-most at the Division-I level. He started the year 7-0 becoming the first Maryland arm to due so since Ryan Ramsey’s 10-0 start in 2022.

***Maryland holds the lead in the all-time series with Nebraska 11-7. The two teams last met in the Big Ten Tournament a year ago where the Terrapins downed the Huskers 2-1 in 10 innings in the second round before winning again 4-2 two days later.

***Players to watch: Eddie and Chris Hacopian

These two brothers are the story of the season for Maryland thus far. The Potomac, Maryland, natives are first (Eddie, .397) and second (Chris, .320) in batting average. They’re also second (Chris, eight) and third (Eddie, five) in home runs. Eddie Hacopian started all 63 games in 2023 as a sophomore and hit .328. Chris Hacopian was the Maryland Gatorade Player of the Year in 2022.

Around the Big Ten

Here are a few Big Ten series to keep tabs on this weekend as well as the conference standings. Records are as of Wednesday evening:

Series:

Rutgers (23-13, 3-6) @ Iowa (18-15, 6-6)

Ohio State (18-15, 5-4) @ Michigan (18-20, 8-4)

Northwestern (12-20, 3-6) @ Illinois (20-13, 7-2)

Standings:

Broadcast Information

TV: Big Ten+/Nebraska Public Media: HERE

Radio: Huskers Radio Network (Radio simulcast found HERE)

Stations: Lincoln (1400 AM), Omaha (590 AM)