Huskers Begin Series with Creighton

TV: Tuesday’s game will be shown statewide on NET and NET-HD and simulcast nationally on CBS College Sports with Larry Punteney and Adrian Fiala calling all of the action. It is the first of five games set for telecast on NET this spring.

Tickets: General admission tickets are $7 (adults) and $5 (youth and seniors) and can be purchased at Hawks Field beginning 90 minutes before first pitch. UNL students get in free with a valid N-Card. On Tuesday, the first 500 UNL students who enter through the center field gate will receive a 2009 Berm Zone T-shirt.

Creighton (14-15) vs. Nebraska (16-14-1)
Tuesday April 7  6:05 p.m.

Media Info
Television: Live on NET, NET-HD and CBS College Sports (Ch. 613 on DirecTV; Ch. 152 on DISH Network)
Radio: IMG Husker Sports Network and for free on the Internet at Huskers.com
Video: Free Live Video on Huskers.com
Live Stats:  Huskers.com 

Probable Starting Pitchers
Nebraska-Kash Kalkowski, Fr., RHP (1-1, 6.00 ERA) 
Creighton-Mike Nihsen, Jr., RHP (2-1, 5.02 ERA)

Radio: Fans across Nebraska can listen to Greg Sharpe and Lane Grindle call the action on the Husker Sports Network stations, including KLIN 1400 AM in Lincoln, KRVN 880 AM in Lexington and KFAB 1110 AM in Omaha and on Huskers.com.

Internet Video: Tuesday’s game also marks the debut of the new Huskers.com video player. Fans who watch the feed will be able to have live stats, polls and much more on their browser. For more info on the new player, visit Huskers.com.

On Tap: The Nebraska baseball team continues its homestand on Tuesday night as the Huskers welcome Creighton to Hawks Field at Haymarket Park for a non-conference match-up. First pitch is set for 6:05 p.m., and the game will be televised statewide on NET and NET-HD and shown nationally on CBS College Sports. Tuesday’s game is the first of three contests with the Bluejays this year, with the other match-ups taking place at Omaha’s Rosenblatt Stadium on April 21 and May 12. The Huskers have won 15 of the last 20 match-ups since Mike Anderson took over at Nebraska in 2003, including a series sweep in 2008.

The Huskers (16-14-1) look to snap a five-game losing streak following a series loss to Kansas State over the weekend. The three-game series with the Wildcats ended a stretch where the Huskers had seven games, including a pair of doubleheaders, in a seven-day stretch. One highlight in the loss was the performance of sophomore right-hander Casey Hauptman, who went a career-long 6.2 innings and retired 19 of 20 KSU hitters over one stretch. Creighton (14-15) comes off a weekend series win at Evansville, winning the finale, 10-5, in 10 innings.

3 Things to Watch
1.  Senior Jeff Tezak leads the Huskers with 20 walks to rank ninth in the Big 12 and has struck out just seven times in 99 at-bats. In Big 12 action, he is even better with 11 walks and no strikeouts
2. Freshman Cody Asche (.407 in 27 at-bats) and Cory Burleson (.412 in 17 at-bats) lead the Huskers with runners in scoring position
3. First baseman Tyler Farst has hit safely in 23 of his last 25 contests, including a pair of 11-game hit streaks in that span. Farst also tops NU with 14 multi hit games this season.

Scouting Creighton
The Bluejays have overcome a slow start to enter the week with a 14-15 record following a series win at Evansville over the weekend. The Bluejays, who lost eight of their first nine games, are in second place in the Missouri Valley Conference with a 7-2 mark. Under the direction of seventh-year coach Ed Servais (210-114 at CU), the Bluejays return 17 lettermen, including four starters from a team that went 37-21 a year ago.

Offensively, the Bluejays are led by outfielder Robbie Knight, who is hitting .371 with a team-high 24 runs scored.  All-Missouri Valley Conference first baseman Darin Ruf has been the Bluejays’ top run producer, leading Creighton in both homers (6) and RBIs (28) while hitting .313 on the year. In all, seven starters are hitting over .300.

On the mound, the Bluejays’ strength has been balance, as seven pitchers have two wins apiece while no pitcher has thrown more than 37.1 innings on the season. Right-hander Mike Nihsen (2-1, 5.02 ERA) will make his seventh start of the year on Tuesday as he has allowed 33 hits over 28.2 innings.

Series History: NU leads the all-time series, 69-36-2, and has won 15-of-20 meetings since Mike Anderson took over as Nebraska’s head coach in 2003. The Huskers have swept the season series four times this decade (2000, 2003, 2006 and 2008).

Weekend Review
Friday Game 1 (Kansas State 15, Nebraska 1):  A slow start proved costly, as Kansas State scored five times in the top of the first and cruised to a 15-1 victory. Left-hander Jordan Roualdes saw his four-game win streak snapped, allowing eight runs over four innings of work to suffer his first loss since March 1. Justin Bloxom went 4-for-6 with three RBIs, while Jurica and Martini drove in two runs apiece for the Wildcats. Lance Hoge earned the win, allowing one run on five hits over six innings to improve to 4-2 on the year.  Boomer Collins and Kyle Bubak had two hits apiece, while Tyler Farst extended his hit streak to 11 games with an RBI single.

Friday Game 2 (Kansas State 9, Nebraska 3):  NU raced out to a 3-0 lead against K-State ace A.J. Morris, only to see the Wildcats come back with three runs in the fourth and add three more in the fifth in a 9-3 loss.  Consecutive singles by Jeff Tezak and Nick Sullivan started NU’s second-inning rally before DJ Belfonte ripped a 3-2 pitch for an RBI double. Morris then uncorked a wild pitch that allowed Sullivan to score from third to stake the Huskers a two-run lead before Cody Asche’s RBI single made it 3-0. Tezak went 2-for-4 with a run scored while no other Husker had more than one hit off of Morris, who settled down after a rocky first three innings. Nebraska starter Sean Yost took a shutout into the fourth before running into trouble, as KSU took advantage of a walk and two hit batters to push across three runs. One inning later, the Wildcats scored three more runs off of Eric Rose and never trailed again.

Saturday (Kansas State 5, Nebraska 3):  Nebraska received a solid performance from sophomore Casey Hauptman, but three Kansas State runs in the top of the first inning proved costly in a 5-3 Wildcat win Saturday afternoon. Hauptman (2-2) pitched well in a losing effort, allowing three earned runs over a career-high 6.2 innings of work. The right-hander fanned three and allowed only five hits, but four of them came in the first, as the Wildcats (24-8, 5-4 Big 12) pushed across three runs before Hauptman retired 19 of the next 20 hitters he faced.  Cody Neer, Tyler Farst and Adam Bailey had two hits apiece for the Huskers, while Bailey, Jeff Tezak and Kyle Bubak’s RBIs accounted for the Huskers’ offense.

The Week Ahead
Because of the Easter holiday this weekend, Nebraska’s series with Texas will run Thursday-Saturday with 6:05 p.m. starts set for both Thursday and Friday and a 1:05 p.m. start on Saturday. The Husker softball team will also host Texas on Friday and Saturday and fans who have baseball tickets can attend the softball games for $1.

New Huskers.com Video Player to Debut on Tuesday
Tuesday’s game also marks the debut of a new video player for Huskers.com. All remaining home games, beginning with Tuesday’s game, will be available for free to fans on the site. The new player includes live stats embedded in the player along with interactive polls and much more.

Leading Off
?-Four former Huskers are on Major League Baseball opening-day roster, as the 2009 season begins this week. The newest Husker Major Leaguer is pitcher Brian Duensing, who is pitching for the Minnesota Twins. He will become the 27th former Husker to reach the Major Leagues and the first Husker from Omaha to reach the Majors since Bill McGuire in the late 1980s. Houston Astro Darin Erstad begins his 14th season in the Major Leagues and trails only Stan Bahnsen (1966-82) among Huskers in terms of time in the Major Leagues, while Alex Gordon and Joba Chamberlain are each in their third season in the Majors.

?-Kansas State’s sweep of the Huskers marked the first time NU has been swept at home at Hawks Field and the first time since the 1997 season.

?-First baseman Tyler Farst has put together a pair of 11-game hit streaks on the season and had reached safely (via hit, walk or HBP) in 30 consecutive games dating back to last season. Farst is hitting .374 overall, but even better in Big 12 action with a .422 mark.

?-Catcher Cody Neer leads the Big 12 with six doubles in league play. Neer has nine hits in conference action, but seven of those have been for extra bases (six doubles and a homer). Neer hit a team-best .364 (4-for-11) with a pair of doubles in the series loss to Kansas State over the weekend.

?-Jed Hanson has made the most of his limited action, belting three homers in as many starts. Hanson is slugging a team-best 1.444 in nine at-bats.  The last Husker to homer in three straight games was Luke Gorsett in 2006, while the only other Husker to accomplish the feat under Mike Anderson was Daniel Bruce in 2004. In fact, the last Husker to homer in four consecutive games was Jed Morris, who had a streak of five straight games with a homer in 2002.

?-With his homer against Northern Colorado on March 25, Jed Hanson became the first Husker to homer in his first career at-bat in over a decade.  Hanson had not appeared in NU’s first 23 games before homering on the first pitch he saw as a Husker.

?-One area that senior Jeff Tezak has excelled in this season is plate discipline. Tezak not only leads the Huskers in walks, but has struck out seven times to leads all Big 12 players in strikeouts per at-bat. Tezak also paces all league players in walk-to-strikeout ratio entering this week’s action.

?-Nebraska has shown the ability to score runs in bunches. The Huskers have already plated five runs in an inning 10 times through the first half of the season, eclipsing the team’s entire 2008 total of seven in 59 contests. Here is a look at the Huskers’ biggest innings this spring.

?-Nebraska already has 10 come-from-behind wins among its 16 victories, including six wins where the Huskers had to overcome at least a three-run deficit. The seven-run comeback against Northern Colorado on March 24 equaled the Huskers’ largest comeback since the 2000 season, when NU overcame a 10-0 defict against Iowa State. NU has 109 come-from-behind wins under Mike Anderson since 2003.

?-Nebraska hitters have taken a beating this season, as the Huskers have been hit by 48 pitches to rank second in the Big 12. One look at the Husker career chart also shows the Huskers’ propensity to get hit by pitches. DJ Belfonte has been hit 38 times in his career, including nine times in 2008, to move into sole possession of second place on Nebraska’s career list. He is joined by Nick Sullivan (34, fourth) and Jake Mort (32, sixth) on NU’s career list.

?-Junior college transfer Kyle Bubak has made the most of his opportunities at the top of the Husker lineup. Since moving into the leadoff spot on March 4, Bubak is hitting .363 with a homer, 11 RBIs and 26 runs scored. The Husker offense has also made significant improvement in that span, averaging nearly eight runs per game over the last 22 contests.  Prior to Bubak’s move to the top of the lineup, NU’s leadoff hitters were hitting a combined .154.

?-Jeff Tezak’s two-homer day at Oklahoma on March 29 marked the first by a Husker this season and the first since Jake Opitz had two homers against Eastern Illinois in the 2008 NCAA Lincoln Regional.

?-Nebraska’s five homers in the series opener at No. 11 Oklahoma on Sunday marked NU’s highest single-game total since belting five against Nebraska-Kearney on April 19, 2006, and the most by the Huskers in a Big 12 game since hitting five homers against Texas A&M on April 22, 2000.

?-When Cody Asche and Jed Hanson belted back-to-back homers in the nightcap against No. 11 Oklahoma on Sunday, it marked the first time it had happened for the Huskers since Andy Gerch and Jake Opitz accomplished the feat on May 12, 2007.
?-Nebraska has shown a flare for the dramatic in 2009, winning five games in its last at-bat, including four runs in the bottom of the eighth in a 14-13 win over Northern Colorado on March 24. NU also scored six times in the bottom of the eighth in a 14-12 win over Missouri State on Feb. 27 and five times in the bottom of the eighth in a 10-6 win over North Dakota on Feb. 25.

?-The Huskers have reached double figures in runs 10 times this season and are fast approaching the team’s entire 2008 total of 12.

?-NU has enjoyed a youth movement in 2009, as 15 players have seen their first action as Huskers this season.  The group includes eight freshmen, five junior college transfers and a pair of sophomores who did not play because of injuries the past two years.  

?-Nebraska is 1-1-1 this year in extra frames and 15-9-2 (.615) in extra-inning contests since 2003. NU’s most extra-inning games in a season this decade is five, set in 2001, 2005, 2006 and 2008.

?-Nebraska set a school and Big 12 record in the opener against UL-Lafayette, as five Husker pitchers combined for 22 strikeouts, breaking the school and conference mark of 21 set at Iowa State on April 18, 1999. Three of the top five strikeout performances have been under pitching coach Eric Newman over the past two seasons.

?-Since the NCAA went to the 64-team format in 1999, Nebraska has made nine NCAA Tournament appearances, which ties for seventh nationally in that time period. The only teams to earn more bids than Nebraska in that span are Cal State Fullerton, Florida State, Miami, Oral Roberts, Rice and Texas.

?-Nebraska is the only Big 12 program to win at least 40 games in eight of the past 10 years, including three 50-win seasons.

?-Nebraska has won 131 of its last 132 games when taking a lead into the ninth inning and is 131-0-1 in that stretch dating back to the 2005 season. NU is 226-3-1 (.985) when leading after eight innings under Mike Anderson.

?-The Huskers are 47-2 dating back to last season when they out-hit an opponent, as Saturday’s loss to Kansas State marked only the second time in the last two years that NU has out-hit an opponent, but lost the game. The Huskers have won over 90 percent of their games since 2003 when out-hitting an opponent.

?-The Huskers are now 92-1 under Mike Anderson when reaching double figures in runs, including 64-0 since the start of the 2005 season.

?-NU is 16-4-1 when getting at least 10 hits this season, but winless in the 10 games without reaching double figures in hits.