Nebraska baseball sees second late lead slip away, loses 7-6 to Oklahoma

Nebraska baseball dropped its second game in the ninth inning in as many days on Sunday afternoon. The Oklahoma Sooners came back from multiple three-run deficits to plate a pair in the bottom of the ninth and hand the Huskers a 7-6 defeat.

Head coach Will Bolt and company led from the jump and took a 6-3 lead into the final three innings but couldn’t finish the job on the way to a 1-2 start.

“We need to finish,” Bolt said postgame on the Huskers Radio Network. “We need to have that killer instinct. We gotta play with that chip on our shoulder the entire weekend and not just hope that we’re going to finish it. But (we have to understand) that we’re good enough to play with anyone in the country and we come out with a certain mindset we’ll do just that.”

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Following a one-out walk from Josh Overbeek and a single by Dylan Carey, Nebraska benefited from some good fortune in the first. Tyler Stone struck out on a breaking ball in the dirt but the throw to complete the strikeout was high and sailed up the right-field line. That allowed Overbeek to score and Carey followed when the throw back home was off the mark as well.

Caleb Clark got himself into trouble with a four-pitch leadoff walk in the third. The southpaw appeared to stabilize with consecutive strikeouts but surrendered a single and hit a batter to load the bases. A throwing error on a pickoff attempt allowed a run to score for the Sooners and a walk from Clark spelled the end of his afternoon.

Tucker Timmerman made his second appearance of the weekend and delivered a strikeout to shutdown the Oklahoma threat and hold the score at 2-1.

After striking out nine times in the first four innings, the Huskers broke through in the fifth. Singles from Riley Silva and Overbeek sandwiched a double from Cayden Brumbaugh. The base hit from Overbeek drove in a pair of runs and later Josh Caron tacked on another with a RBI single that made it 5-1.

The shutdown inning proved elusive for Drew Christo who opened the bottom of the fifth by allowing a leadoff single and a walk. The right-hander nearly escaped unscathed but with two outs he surrendered an RBI single and gave up another run on a wild pitch as Oklahoma drew within 5-3.

A two-out rally sparked by Silva and Overbeek stretched the Husker advantage to 6-3 but the Sooners countered with a vengeance in the seventh. Bryce Madron smashed Oklahoma’s first home run of the season over the right-field fence to make it 6-5.

Evan Borst finished the inning and worked a 1-2-3 eighth protecting the Huskers edge for the ninth. Nebraska’s bats failed to add any insurance and so NU turned to Casey Daiss for his second save opportunity of the season. The right-hander allowed a leadoff single and with two outs Michael Snyder doubled to left and scored the tying run.

“Some left-handed hitters took some good swings off him,” Bolt said of Daiss. “He’s gotta be down in the zone. I think the first hit was an 0-2 pitch. He needed to make a better pitch right there. Just gotta execute.”

An intentional walk and a hit batter on a 1-2 pitch loaded the bases and Jaxon Willits punched a walk-off single up the middle to give Oklahoma the win.

Nebraska showed encouraging signs despite 1-2 start, now it needs to finish

Despite the sour taste that Nebraska left Globe Life Field with this weekend, this feels a lot different than the 0-3-1 opener at San Diego in 2023 or the 1-3 start at Sam Houston in 2022. What separates then and now is that the Huskers very easily could have gone 3-0 and made a statement on opening weekend. Missing out on that in gut-wrenching fashion is brutal adversity out of the gate.

“On one hand you can look at it and there’s a lot of positives from the weekend,” Bolt said. “We faced a lot of really good arms and grinded it out offensively. We saw some guys emerge in the pen. But on the same token, you feel like you played well enough for most of all three games to come out with three wins. We just didn’t finish. Having that mentality to go finish, we’re still trying to figure it out. Obviously down to the last out right there and that just can’t happen.”

The discourse around Nebraska’s bullpen changes dramatically if not for the Huskers’ ninth-inning failures. It’s a unit that handled the majority of Sunday’s action and saw several new faces like Tucker Timmerman, Tyner Horn and Evan Borst show promise throughout the weekend.

On the other side, the bats have to find ways to get going earlier than they did this weekend. Nebraska had little going prior to the fifth inning on Friday or Sunday and finished each game with double-digit strikeouts.

“I thought it was terrible,” Will Bolt said. “I thought our offensive approach was abysmal early in the game and then you look up and we put up five runs in the first five innings against a good left-hander. That’s why there are some positives there. We were pretty resilient within the game where it looked like we were pretty clueless for a lot of the game. Then we pieced together some clutch hits. Overbeek sparked us there and we had some clutch ones after that.”

Nebraska is close. Now the Huskers have to find a way to continue pushing and get over the hump before a tough series at Grand Canyon next weekend.

Overbeek and Silva shine in Husker debuts weekends

It really seems like Nebraska has found a pair of junior college gems in Josh Overbeek and Riley Silva.

Overbeek made an early impact on Friday with several solid defensive plays at third despite his 0-for-4 start at the dish. Then he responded against No. 21 Texas Tech by putting together a four-hit day and hit a critical two-RBI single that appeared to blow the game open against Oklahoma in the fifth. He could prove to be very dangerous in the top half of the Husker order.

Meanwhile, Silva quietly finished the weekend with a .400 batting average and two RBI. Both of those came with two outs. He also stole three bases. Silva’s versatility and speed make him an intriguing piece of the bottom of Nebraska’s lineup that can set the table for the top half or generate a two-out rally with a clutch base hit (like he did in the sixth against OU).

If Daiss had been able to complete the save today, there would have been three Husker JUCO standouts included in this section. Next comes sustaining this level of play throughout the remainder of the season.

What’s next for Nebraska baseball?

Nebraska baseball stays on the road next weekend with a trip to Phoenix, Arizona, to take on Grand Canyon University. The four-game set begins on Thursday night with the first three games set to start at 7:00 p.m. CT and Sunday’s finale at 1:00 p.m. CT.

All four games will be streamed on ESPN+ and can be heard on the Huskers Radio Network.