No. 2 Huskers Open Big 12 Slate with Kansas

2006 Record (15-2, 0-0 Big 12)
National Rankings: 2 (CB) ? 8 (BA) ? 4 (Sports Weekly) ? 3 (NCBWA)
Day Date Rank Opponent Radio Live Video Time
Sat. March 25 -/-/- Kansas (16-8, 4-1 Big 12)  Pinnacle Sports Network HuskersNside 12:05 p.m. (DH)
Sun. March 26 -/-/- Kansas Pinnacle Sports Network HuskersNside 1:05 p.m.
Polls are in the following order: Collegiate Baseball/Baseball America/Sports Weekly

Pitching Probables
Sat.-1 Joba Chamberlain, Jr., RHP (2-1, 1.29 ERA, 21 IP) 
Sean Land, Jr., LHP (4-3, 3.82 ERA, 37.2 IP) 

Sat.-2 Tony Watson, So., LHP (3-0, 1.78 ERA, 30.1 IP) 
Ricky Fairchild, Sr., RHP (4-1, 4.31 ERA, 39.2 IP)

Sun. Johnny Dorn, So., RHP (3-1, 3.33 ERA, 24.1 IP) 
Kodiak Quick, Sr., RHP (3-2, 1.96 ERA, 46.0 IP)

Media Information
Tickets:  Club (sold out); Reserved (sold out); General Admission ($7, $5, UNL Students free with ID)
Live Stats:  Huskers.com 
Radio:  Pinnacle Sports Network
Live Video:  HuskersNside (subscription package) 
Internet Radio:  Huskers.com
Television:  Saturday’s first game will be shown on Cox Cable in Omaha (Ch. 2) and on Time Warner Cable in Lincoln (Ch. 77)

No. 2 Huskers Open Big 12 Slate with Kansas
The Nebraska baseball team begins defense of its Big 12 title this weekend, as the Huskers welcome Kansas into Hawks Field at Haymarket Park. The three-game series was scheduled to begin Friday evening, but the series has been adjusted because of the weather in the Midwest earlier this week. The series will now consist of a doubleheader Saturday at 12:05 p.m. with a single-game on Sunday at 1:05 p.m.

Fans who have tickets to Saturday’s game will be able to use those tickets for the twinbill, while fans who had purchased tickets for Friday’s contest will be able to use those tickets for general admission seating for any of the remaining regular-season home games, based on seating availability.

The Kansas series will be carried across the state on the 19-station Pinnacle Sports Network, including KFAB 1110 AM (Omaha), KLIN 1400 AM (Lincoln) and KRVN 880 AM (Lexington) and on the Internet at Huskers.com as a school-record 49 regular-season games will be carried on the network during the 2006 season.

Saturday’s series opener against the Jayhawks will be the first of six regular-season televised games (Cox Cable Ch. 2 in Omaha, Time Warner Cable Ch. 77 in Lincoln) with Greg Sharpe, Paul Meyers and Damon Benning calling all of the action. In addition, fans will be able to watch all three games on the Internet on HuskersNside.com

The Huskers enter Big 12 play on a roll with 11 straight wins and have not lost since a 3-2 setback to Rice in Houston on Feb. 25. Since then, NU has posted a staff ERA of 1.48, despite having the services of All-American Joba Chamberlain for just one start in that stretch. Nebraska has climbed to as high as No. 2 in this week’s national polls, while its No. 2 ranking by Collegiate Baseball is the highest that NU has ever been ranked in that publication (NU was ranked No. 1 by Baseball America for three weeks in 2001).

Saturday’s Big 12 opener will also mark the return of Chamberlain, who has not pitched in NU’s last two series. He missed his start against Alabama with tightness in his tricep and was held out of last Friday’s start because of the weather.  Chamberlain, who is 2-1 with a 1.29 ERA, last pitched against Notre Dame on March 3, holding the Fighting Irish scoreless with 11 strikeouts in an 11-1 Husker win.

Nebraska runs into a battle-tested Kansas team this weekend, as the Jayhawks are 16-8 overall and 1-2 in the Big 12 after dropping 2-of-3 games at No. 18 Baylor over the weekend. KU, which also had a mid-week game at Creighton canceled because of weather, has played 11 games against ranked teams, including a series win at then-No. 8 Stanford in February. The Jayhawks also nearly won a series at then No. 2 Clemson two weeks ago.

Who’s Hot
?-Brandon Buckman is hitting .462 (12-for-26) with four homers and 10 RBIs over his last seven contests. Buckman has two multi-homer games in that stretch and matched his career high with four RBIs against Illinois State on March 15. In that span, he has raised his average 111 points to a season-high .311 average.
?-Since allowing three runs in the ninth inning of his 2006 debut against NC State, senior closer Brett Jensen has been nothing short of spectacular, going 3-0 with three saves and a 0.00 ERA in his last seven appearances, spanning 14 innings of work.
?-Reserve catcher Jeff Lanning has made the most of his limited time behind the plate, going 3-for-6 in three games last week. Lanning, who has a four-game hit streak, went 1-for-2 with an RBI and a hit-by-pitch in his first career start against Illinois State on March 14. Lanning’s first career start on March 14 snapped a streak of 30 consecutive starts by Jeff Christy dating back to last season.
 ?-Second baseman Jake Opitz snapped a 1-for-14 dryspell last week, hitting .416 in four games, including a pair of two-hit games, as he raised his average to .304 entering the weekend.

Leading Off
?-Nebraska is off to one of its best starts in school history, as its 17-2 record ties for the second-best start in school history. Only the 1983 team (which opened the year with 26 straight wins) and the 1979 teams had a better 17-game stretch to open the year.

?-Nebraska is 7-0 at home this season and has a 19-game home winning streak dating back to a 7-5 win over Missouri on May 7, 2005. That streak is the longest in the Hawks Field era (2002-present), breaking the previous record of 17 games to open last season. NU is now more than halfway to its school-record home winning streak, a 39-game stretch over the 1979 and 1980 seasons. In that streak, only 13 of the wins were over Division I teams, while all 19 of the current streak have been over Division I teams.

Current Home Winning Streaks
No. Team Home Win Streak
1.  Florida State  27
2 . Nebraska  19
3 . Kansas State  18
3 . Oral Roberts  18
5 . South Carolina  14
as of Monday (www.warren-nolan.com)

?-Nebraska has had four home win streaks of at least 10 games since moving into Hawks Field at the start of the 2002 season.
?-Weather has plagued the Nebraska-Kansas series in recent years, as the the teams have been forced to play at least one doubleheader in each of the last four seasons. The 2001 season marked the last time the teams were not forced to play a twinbill because of adverse weather.
?-Three members of the 2006 Huskers hail from the state of Kansas, relievers Jared Cranston (Colby) and Matt Foust (Overland Park) and two-way performer Ryan Bohanan (Goddard), who is redshirting because of off-season shoulder surgery.
?-Nebraska has already sold out all the reserved and club seats at Hawks Field for the 2006 season. NU ranked sixth nationally in average attendance, averaging a school-record 4,984 fans per game in 2005. NU’s number is based on actual game attendance, not tickets sold.
?-Nebraska has held 14 of its first 17 opponents to four runs or less this season and its 2.70 runs allowed per game leads the nation.
?-Nebraska’s bullpen has made great strides from the season’s opening weekend. After giving up eight runs in 14.1 innings, NU has posted a 1.36 ERA over its last 13 games. Brett Jensen and Jared Cranston have not allowed an earned run since the opening weekend.
?-Nebraska is one of only three teams in the country that returns two pitchers who won at least 10 games in 2005 (Oregon State and Miami of Ohio are the others).
?-Nebraska is one of only seven teams in all of Division I baseball to post team ERAs below 4.00 over the last four seasons, joining Cal State Fullerton, Long Beach State, Oral Roberts, Rice, Texas and Wichita State.  The Huskers were second nationally with a 2.69 team ERA in 2005.
?-Nebraska is one of only six programs nationally to reach the College World Series in three of the past five seasons, joining Cal State Fullerton, Miami, South Carolina, Stanford and Texas. The Big 12 is the only league with more than one team in that group.
?- Nebraska has scored at least one run in each of its last 148 games dating back to the start of the 2005 campaign. The streak is the longest in the Big 12, while NU has scored in 479 of the last 480 games dating back to the 1998 season.
?-Nebraska already has five come-from-behind wins this season a stretch of four straight (March 12-15) during its current 11-game winning streak. The other come-from-behind win came against Richmond, as NU rallied from a two-run ninth-inning deficit. Despite recording 20 come-from-behind wins in 2005, the Huskers were 0-9 in games when they trailed entering the ninth frame a season ago.

Bingham to Face Old Team
Nebraska assistant coach Dave Bingham will have the program he built for the first time during this weekend’s series with Kansas. The Husker pitching coach, who has guided NU to a 2.25 team ERA this season, served as head coach of the Jayhawk program from 1988 to 1995. In that time, he led  KU to 249 wins, two NCAA Regionals (1993-94) and the school’s only College World Series trip in 1993.  His 1993 KU staff also included current Kansas State head coach Brad Hill, whose Wildcats host the Huskers next weekend.

Scouting Kansas
Fourth-year coach Ritch Price has Kansas on the rise, as the Jayhawks are 16-8 on the season coming to Lincoln. The Jayhawks have been tested against a schedule that included 11 games against ranked teams. KU sprinted into the national polls following a 6-1 start, highlighted by a series win at No. 8 Stanford, and have been tested in series at Baylor and Clemson, both of whom have been fixtures in the national polls.

Offensively, KU is led by outfielder Gus Milner, who is hitting .402 with six homers and a Big 12-best 30 RBIs. All-Big 12 infielder Jared Schweitzer has also been instrumental in the Jayhawks’ start, as he is also hitting .392 with three homers and 13 RBIs.
On the mound, Kansas has relied heavily on its weekend rotation of left-hander Sean Land (4-3, 3.82 ERA), Ricky Fairchild (4-1, 4.31 ERA) and Kodiak Quick (3-2, 1.96 ERA) as the trio has made 21 of KU’s 24 starts. At the back end of the staff is closer Don Czyz, who leads the Big 12 with eight saves and has a 3-0 record with a 0.35 ERA, allowing one earned run in 26.1 innings.
Nebraska leads the series 133-89-1 in a series that dates back to 1892. In fact, it is NU’s longest-running series agaist a conference opponent. The Huskers have won the the season series in each of the last seven seasons, including taking 2-of-3 from the Jayhawks last season in Lawrence.

Last Time Out
Friday (Nebraska 10-3, South Dakota State 0-0):Three Nebraska pitchers held South Dakota State scoreless on Friday afternoon, as the Huskers posted a doubleheader sweep (10-0, 3-0) on Friday. After Tony Watson and Luke Wertz combined for a two-game shutout in the opener, redshirt freshman Charlie Shirek needed only 67 pitches to become the first Husker in seven years to fire a complete-game shutout. Shirek  struck out three and allowed only three singles over seven frames to pick up his first career win.

In the opener, Watson improved to 3-0 and picked up his first victory since Feb. 24, as he fanned six over five innings of two-hit ball and lowered his ERA to 1.78.

The Huskers also relied on their legs in the sweep, swiping 10 bases on the day, including eight in the opener. Nick Jaros keyed NU’s offensive attack by going 3-for-3 with three stolen bases and a trio of RBIs in game one, as Nebraska used a five-run third to break the game open. Bryce Nimmo also went 3-for-3 and scored a career-high four runs in the opener.

In the nightcap, NU jumped to a 2-0 lead in the first on RBI singles by Andrew Brown and Jake Opitz, who went 2-for-3, before

Nick Sullivan’s RBI double in the fourth gave NU an insurance run, as the redshirt freshman had two hits in the win.