Huskers Battle Baylor in Big 12 Opener

Nebraska 
39-13, 17-10 Big 12
Phillips 66
Big 12 Championship
Schedule

Wednesday - 10 a.m.
vs. Baylor
34-22, 13-14 Big 12
Thursday - 8 p.m.
vs. Texas Tech
31-21-1, 9-16-1 
Saturday - 1 p.m.
vs. Texas (FSN)
38-18, 19-7
Sunday -1 p.m.
Championship Game (FSN)

Nebraska Rotation
Wednesday - Charlie Shirek, R-Fr., RHP (4-2, 3.12 ERA, 60.2 IP)
Friday - Joba Chamberlain, Jr., RHP (5-4, 3.72 ERA, 75 IP)
Saturday - Tony Watson, So., LHP (8-1, 3.06 ERA, 88.1 IP)
Sunday - Johnny Dorn, So., RHP (9-4, 3.44 ERA, 81.0 IP)

Media Information
Television: Saturday on FSN (Ch. 37 in Lincoln; Ch. 46 in Omaha)
Live Stats:  Huskers.com 
Radio:  Pinnacle Sports Network
Internet Radio:  Huskers.com 
Video Streaming:  None
Satellite Radio:  SIRIUS (Channel TBA)

Huskers Head to OKC for Big 12 Championship
The Nebraska baseball team returns to the road this week, as the Huskers will travel to the AT&T Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City for the 2006 Phillips 66 Big 12 Championship beginning Wednesday.

The Huskers (39-14) were the No. 4 seed in the Big 12 Championship after tying Oklahoma for third place in the regular season. In the new pool format, Nebraska will play each of the other teams on its side of the bracket once with the winner of each division advancing to Sunday’s Championship game.

Nebraska’s side of the bracket includes regular-season champion Texas, fifth-seeded Baylor and eighth-seeded Texas Tech, while Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri round out the eight-team field. Nebraska will open the championship on Wednesday, May 24, as it takes on Baylor (34-22) at 10 a.m.  NU will take on Texas Tech on Thursday at 8 p.m. and will round out divisional play on Saturday afternoon against nationally ranked Texas at 1 p.m. in a game that will be carried to much of the country on FSN.

All of Nebraska’s Big 12 Championship games will be carried across the state on the Pinnacle Sports Network, including KLIN (1400 AM) in Lincoln, KFAB (1110 AM) in Omaha and KRVN (880 AM) in Lexington, and on the Internet at Huskers.com. Live stats will also be posted on Huskers.com

The Huskers will take aim at their fifth Big 12 Tourney title since the league went to the eight-team format in 1999, as NU won three straight tournament titles from 1999 to 2001 before claiming last season’s crown.  The Huskers will look to rebound after dropping 2-of-3 to No. 13 Oklahoma over the weekend, and can lock up their 16th 40-win season in school history as early as Wednesday. NU also looks to extract revenge on a Baylor team that swept the Huskers two weeks ago in Waco.

Leading Off
?-Nebraska has enjoyed the confines of the AT&T Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City, going 20-3 all-time in the park since the 1999 season, including four Big 12 titles (1999-01, 2005).
?-Nebraska has played well in front of the cameras this season, going 8-0 in televised games following Saturday’s win over No. 13 Oklahoma. NU has been on FSN one other time in 2005, a 7-5 win over Texas.
?-Nebraska brings one of the league’s youngest teams to Oklahoma City, as 18 of the 27 players on the Huskers’ postseason roster are freshmen or sophomores. In addition, only four of NU’s nine junior and seniors (Buckman, Chamberlain, Christy and Jensen) saw time during the 2005 Big 12 Tournament.

?-Under first-year hitting coach Andy Sawyers, who assisted with team hitting duties from 2003-05, Nebraska’s team average in Big 12 play jumped nearly 50 points to .317, its highest average in Big 12 play since the 2000 season.

NU’s Big 12 Batting Average
Year Team Big 12 Batting Average
2006 .317
2005 .262
2004 .258
2003 .295
2002 .288
2001 .307
2000 .347

?-Andrew Brown’s two-homer game on May 12 at Baylor marked the Huskers’ sixth multi-homer game of the season.
?-Nebraska’s game against Creighton on May 16 drew a crowd of 21,158, a total that was college baseball’s highest single-game total of 2005. The game also outdrew six Major League games that same evening.
?-Nebraska’s 39-14 record entering the Big 12 Championship is only two games back of last season’s pace after 53 games. It is also ahead of NU’s 2002 CWS team, which was 36-17 at the same point in time.
?-Nebraska is one win away from achieving its 16th 40-win season in school history, including seventh in the past eight seasons. In fact, the Huskers are tied with Texas Tech for the most 40-win seasons in Big 12 history with six apiece.
?-Nebraska has gotten off to fast starts, outscoring its opponents 55-19 in the first inning of games this season. In fact, NU has scored at least one run in the first inning in 22 of its last 36 contests.
?-Nebraska has held 36 of its first 53 opponents to four runs or less this season and its 3.8 runs allowed per game ranks fourth nationally.
?-Entering Sunday, NU was sixth in the simulated RPI (warrennolan.com and in Boydsworld.com). NU is 28-12 against teams rated in the top 100 of the RPI. As a league, the Big 12 is third in the RPI, with four teams in the top 15 (NU, Texas, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State).
?-Nebraska is well represented in the latest NCAA stats released May 17. The Huskers rank in the top 20 in five team categories, including ERA (3.19, ninth), slugging percentage (.510, 10th), fielding percentage (.976, 11th), homers per game (1.33, 11th) and batting average (.326, 16th).
Individually, Luke Gorsett ranks among the national leaders in homers per game (18th) and slugging percentage  (23rd). Other Huskers ranked in the top-30 nationally include Brandon Buckman, who is 24th in homers per game, Johnny Dorn, who is 11th nationally in wins and Joba Chamberlain, who is 33rd in strikeouts per nine innings.
?-Wednesday’s Big 12 opener against Baylor will be the 250th game coached by Mike Anderson at Nebraska. The Huskers are 4-0 in the other milestone games, including three wins in thier last at bat.

Milestone Games
Game Opponent Date Score
1 Texas State Feb. 14, 2003 W, 9-6
50 Oklahoma State May 11, 2003 W, 8-7*
100 Missouri April 18, 2004 W, 11-10*
150 Oklahoma State April 1, 2005 W, 8-4
200 Richmond Feb. 19, 2006 W, 5-4*
*-last at-bat wins

?-Nebraska has committed one error or less in 38 of its first 53 contests, including 17 games without an error. NU’s .974 fielding percentage is second in the Big 12 and just off the school record of .975 set in each of the past two seasons.
?-One of NU’s keys to success is the ability to run  while shutting down other team’s running games. NU is third in the Big 12 with 80 stolen bases, including 34-of-47 in Big 12 play, and has allowed a league-low 34 stolen bases.
?-Under first-year pitching coach Dave Bingham, Nebraska’s pitching staff finished the regular season leading the Big 12 in ERA (3.33) and opponent batting average (.244), while ranking second in homers allowed (25) and shutouts (five).
?-While NU’s pitching has been as good as advertised for most of the 2006 campaign, NU’s offensive numbers have been among the Big 12 leaders in most categories. The Huskers’ .317 team average is on pace for NU’s best team average since the 2001 CWS team hit .334.
?-Nebraska is one of only seven teams in all of Division I baseball to post team ERAs below 4.00 over the last four years, 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.
?- The Huskers are 12-6 in games decided by two runs or less this season.
?-Nebraska’s consecutive shutouts of Texas and Wichita State last month marked the first time ever that any school had posted consecutive shutouts against college baseball’s two winningest coaches (Texas’ Augie Garrido and Wichita State’s Gene Stephenson).
?-Nebraska set a school record for regular-season attendance average with 4,864 fans per game in 2006, breaking the previous regular-season mark of 4,426 in 2005. What makes that number more impressive is that NU’s attendance average is actual fans in the ballpark, not tickets sold.
?-Nebraska is one of only three teams in the country that returned two pitchers who won at least 10 games in 2005 (Oregon State and Miami of Ohio are the others).
?-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 184 games dating back to the start of the 2004 campaign. The streak is the longest in the Big 12, while NU has scored in 515 of the last 516 games dating back to the 1998 season.
?-NU already has 13 come-from-behind wins this season, including a trio of four-run deficits, most recently against Texas Tech on April 29. Over the last two seasons, the Huskers have posted 33 come-from-behind wins.

Last Time Out
Friday (Oklahoma 3, Nebraska 2): Nebraska led 2-0 through five innings, but Oklahoma rallied with two runs in the sixth and scored the winning run on Chuckie Caufield’s eighth-inning sacrifice fly, as the Sooners escaped from Hawks Field with a 3-2 victory. The Huskers went down fighting, putting the tying run on in both the eighth and ninth innings off of Sooner ace Daniel McCutchen, who came out of the bullpen for the first time this season after OU took a 3-2 lead. Nick Jaros had three hits, while Jeff Christy and Andrew Brown chipped in a pair of hits in a losing effort.

Saturday (Nebraska 10, Oklahoma 4): Nebraska scored runs in each of the first five innings to bolt to a 10-1 lead and never looked back in a 10-4 win over Oklahoma. Ryan Wehrle and Nick Jaros had three hits apiece, as NU tagged OU starter P.J. Sandoval for two runs in the first and another run in the second before a five-run third gave the Huskers an 8-1 cushion. Tony Watson was in complete command on the hill, holding OU to just one run on eight hits through 6.2 innings to improve to 8-1 on the season.

Sunday (Oklahoma 6, Nebraska 2): Andrew Brown bashed his ninth home run of the season, but Oklahoma used a three-run third inning as a springboard to  earn a 6-2 victory over NU. Daniel McCutchen, the Sooners’ regular Friday night starter, pitched eight strong innings after picking up the save in the final two innings of OU’s 3-2 win on Friday night. McCutchen improved to 7-7 on the year by striking out 11 and walking just two while allowing nine hits.  Johnny Dorn suffered the loss despite surrendering one earned run through seven innings. Dorn, who was 7-0 in Big 12 series-clinching wins before Sunday, walked four and notched two strikeouts, while scattering nine hits. Jake Opitz led NU’s 10-hit attack with a 3-for-4 afternoon.

Five Named Academic All-Big 12
Five University of Nebraska baseball players were among the 45 Big 12 players named to the academic All-Big 12 team announced on May 17.  The list includes four first-team selections in seniors Brandon Buckman and Dustin Timm, sophomore Bryce Nimmo and redshirt freshman Nick Sullivan, while sophomore Luke Wertz was a second-team honoree.
Nebraska has had 19 first-team academic All-Big 12 selections in Mike Anderson’s four seasons as head coach at NU and a total of 27 first and second-team academic All-Big 12 honorees.

Buckman, Nimmo Earn  Academic All-District Honors
Husker baseball players Brandon Buckman and Bryce Nimmo were honored earlier this month, as selections to the ESPN the Magazine Academic All-District VII team. It was the first honor for both players, giving NU a total of 15 Academic All-District VII selections over the past decade.

A native of Monument, Colo., Buckman carries a 3.48 GPA in civil engineering and was a first-team academic All-Big 12 selection in 2006. He has been chosen to the Big 12 Commissioner’s Honor Roll all three semesters at NU
Nimmo, who hails from Cheyenne, Wyo., has also been on the Big 12 Commissioner’s Honor Roll all three semesters at NU, as he carries a 3.43 GPA in management.

Nebraska joined St. Louis University as the only players to have more than one first-team selection in District VII. The two players move on to the national ballot, where they will be considered for Academic All-America honors and hope to join nine other Huskers baseball players who have earned Academic All-America honors since 1999.

Huskers Rank Among Nation’s Best
Nebraska has been among the nation’s top programs over the past few years. The Huskers rank fifth nationally in wins in that stretch, highlighted by three College World Series appearances (2001, 2002, 2005).

In Big 12 play, the Huskers have shown that same consistency, ranking first or second in the Big 12 in five of the last sevens seasons, including a Big 12-best three regular-season titles (2001, 2003, 2005). Here is a list of top-two finishes by league schools since 2000.

Most Wins in Division I (2000-Present)
No. School Wins
1. Florida St. 351
2. Texas 341
3. South Carolina 337
 Rice  337
5. Nebraska 327
Totals as of 5/21/06