After listening to Friday night's game against league-leading Texas A&M, I was certain that this was going to be another repeat of last year's fan-killing style of play from the Nebraska Cornhusker baseball team.
The 16-inning game was a great example of weak mental performances the Huskers had been turning in against top teams in pressure situations. It looked like a sad repeat of late-season conference losses to Oklahoma and Missouri from the past two seasons. Despite extended runs in the Big 12 tournament, these losses inevitably led to postseason losses against University of San Francisco and UC Riverside.
However, the "give up runs in the last inning, and never get a hit with two outs" team of the last three years seems to be a thing of the past after Sunday's victories in the doubleheader against the Aggies. While the pitching was not entirely strong, Nebraska put on their most-encouraging batting performance of the past five years as the Huskers twice came back from deficits of more than three runs on Sunday.
Nebraska has the bats going this season, despite the fact that they are missing standout power. The most outstanding statistic, and the one that should be most encouraging to NU fans is that, "NU is now 15-8-1 against top-50 RPI teams" (www.huskers.com). If they win their series this weekend against Missouri, they stand a very good chance of being Big 12 regular season champs—due to taking two out of three against current leader Texas A&M
Taking a series from the Tigers will not be easy, though. Missouri is currently the No. 14 team in the nation. That's life in the Big 12 right now. They have three teams ranked in the top 12 in RPI, but somehow they are still only the third-best conference in college baseball.
Oh well, we'll see who puts the most teams in Omaha. Hopefully, the Huskers clutch hitting will allow them to stamp a ticket—or fill up for a one-hour drive—to Omaha.
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