The Nebraska Cornhuskers baseball team was eliminated from the Big Ten Tournament on Thursday afternoon in Minneapolis.
Video: Husker baseball season comes to an end
Playing in a near-vacant Target Field, which houses more than 39,000 on a good day, head coach Darin Erstad watched a four-run lead in the eighth-inning dissipate. The Michigan State Spartans notched six runs on four hits, including a grand slam off the bat of Ryan Krill, in the bottom of the eighth, and closed the doors in the ninth, winning 9-7. Just like that, season over: There would be no trip to the Omaha-housed College World Series, played just under an hour from Hawks Field. It was oddly fitting that the game itself was microcosm for the entire season: Hot start, promise instilled, excitement bubbling, disjointed chaos, deluge without explanation.
After falling behind 2-0 in the first-inning, the Huskers responded in the second, getting a run to even it. In the fifth-inning, the team got six runs on four hits.
Kyle Kubat allowed three earned runs on eight hits in five innings of work on the mound. Ben Miller walked two batters and allowed four earned runs without producing an out.
There’s a reason why the Huskers haven’t made it to the College World Series since Mike Anderson brought them to it in 2005. Mostly it has to do with ballooned expectations turned to perennial slip-down-the-stretch finishes. Few would argue that Erstad, who has coached the program since 2012, isn’t doing his part. But getting bounced in the first two games of the conference tournament was a far cry from the team’s sweep of the Texas Longhorns in March, a time when expectations began to soar and the team ostensibly hit its stride.
Erstad’s club finished with No. 19 in team earned run average (3.00), but No. 173 in team batting average (.276). The Huskers lost their last six games of the season, and seven of their last 10, finishing with an overall record of 34-23 (9-14 in Big Ten).
