NU Hosts Wisconsin in Wednesday Doubleheader

The Nebraska softball team welcomes a Big Ten opponent to Bowlin Stadium for the first time ever during the regular season on Wednesday, when the Huskers host a doubleheader with the Wisconsin Badgers beginning at 3 p.m.

Tickets are available over the phone by calling 1-800-8-BIG-RED, online at Huskers.com or on the day of the game at the ticket window located at the main entrance to Bowlin Stadium behind home plate. Fans with a ticket to the Husker baseball team’s 1:35 p.m. contest with Northern Colorado can get into the softball game for only $1 with their baseball ticket stub.

Fans can also follow the action online as Huskers.com will have a free audio broadcast of both games, with veteran softball play-by-play announcer Nate Rohr calling all of the action.

Both the Huskers and the Badgers are enjoying a mid-season break, as Nebraska last played on March 17 and Wisconsin last took the field on March 14. The doubleheader wraps up a four-game homestand for the Huskers, who swept a doubleheader with South Dakota in their first home games of the season last Wednesday.

The Huskers trailed 4-0 after four innings in game one before rallying for a 7-5 win against South Dakota. The four-run comeback tied for Nebraska’s largest since 1999. NU also came back from a four-run deficit in 2004 against UNLV and in 2005 at Iowa State.

Nebraska fell behind again after the first inning in game two before scoring nine runs over the next four innings to earn a 9-3 victory. The doubleheader sweep snapped a two-game losing streak for the Huskers and marked the first back-to-back wins for Nebraska in nearly a month.

The Huskers look to keep the momentum going on Wednesday with a rare regular-season visit from a Big Ten Conference school. In the 29 seasons that softball has been an NCAA sport, Nebraska has played only two home games against a Big Ten opponent during the regular season, a doubleheader sweep of Wisconsin in 2000 by scores of 1-0 and 8-0 in five innings.

Since Bowlin Stadium opened in 2002, Notre Dame and Arkansas are the only non-Big 12 schools from the six major conferences to play in Lincoln during the regular season.

The Badgers should provide a nice test for the Huskers as they prepare to enter Big 12 Conference play this weekend at 15th-ranked Texas. The Wednesday doubleheader also opens a busy stretch of the Husker schedule, as Nebraska will play 10 games in 11 days, including its first four conference games of the season, all against top-25 teams.

Six Big 12 teams are ranked in this week’s USA Softball/ESPN.com top-25 poll, including No. 4 Missouri, No. 9 Oklahoma, No. 15 Texas, No. 16 Oklahoma State, No. 17 Texas A&M and No. 23 Baylor. Texas Tech is unranked but is 28-4 this season as Kansas (14-15) is the only Big 12 team with a losing record.

Nebraska is 15-13 on the year and with a sweep of Wisconsin on Wednesday, the Huskers would move four games above .500 for the first time this season.

Scouting the Wisconsin Badgers (7-13)
The Wisconsin Badgers are 7-13 on the season and Wednesday’s doubleheader will mark their first games in 10 days. The Badgers last took the field on March 14 in a 10-2 five-inning win over Prairie View A&M at the Mizuno Classic hosted by Oklahoma State. Wisconsin finished 3-2 in the event to mark its second winning weekend of the season. UW opened the year with seven straight losses, but is 7-6 since.

The Badgers and Huskers share one common opponent this season in Auburn. NU fell to the Tigers, 2-1, while Wisconsin dropped a 7-0 decision to Auburn. Wisconsin has also played several teams Nebraska is familiar with, including three Big 12 teams. The Badgers are 0-3 against the Big 12 this season and have been outscored a combined 30-4. UW was also shut out by Creighton, 7-0.

Four of Wisconsin’s seven victories have come by at least eight runs, while five of the Badgers’ 13 losses have come by at least five runs. UW is batting .253 as a team and averaging 4.1 runs per game, while opponents are hitting .282 against the Badgers and averaging 5.1 runs per game.

Offensively, two Badgers are hitting better than .300 this season. Molly Spence leads the team with a .373 average, 13 runs, four home runs and 13 RBIs. She is reaching base at a .448 clip and is slugging .661. Karla Powell is batting .311 and leads Wisconsin with a .456 on-base percentage. She has added two doubles and two home runs, while drawing 11 walks. Jennifer Krueger has also drawn 11 walks and she has scored 12 runs and leads the team with 13 stolen bases in 15 attempts. The Badgers have homered 11 times as a team and have stolen 28 bases in 36 attempts.

In the circle, Wisconsin has primarily utilized Letty Olivarez in its three-pitcher rotation. Olivarez has appeared in 17 of the Badgers’ 20 games, including 16 starts, although she has only thrown five complete games. She owns a 5-11 record with a 2.97 ERA in 94.1 innings and has walked 43 while striking out 62. Meghan McIntosh is second on the team with 18.1 innings pitched and has compiled a 1-2 record with a 7.64 ERA. Kristyn Hansen (1-0, 6.07 ERA in 15.0 innings) rounds out the Badger staff.

Husker History vs. Wisconsin
Nebraska leads the all-time series with Wisconsin, 4-0, including a doubleheader sweep in Lincoln on April 26, 2000. That doubleheader marked the first - and only - time a Big Ten opponent played a regular-season game in Lincoln before today. Today’s doubleheader marks the first-ever regular-season games against a Big Ten opponent since Bowlin Stadium opened in 2002. In fact, Arkansas and Notre Dame are the only BCS Conference teams (excluding the Big 12) to play a regular-season game at Bowlin Stadium.

The all-time series has historically been close, as three of the Huskers’ four victories have been by only one run. The fourth win was an 8-0 five-inning victory in game two of the 2000 doubleheader in Lincoln. The teams met three times that year, with Nebraska winning a 5-4 decision on the opening weekend of the season and taking the first game of the doubleheader, 1-0. The most recent meeting came during Nebraska’s 2002 Women’s College World Series season, when the Huskers defeated the Badgers, 2-1, at the Capital Classic in Sacramento, Calif.

Quick Hitters
The information below provides a quick glimpse of a few statistics and brief notes of interest as the Huskers host a Wednesday doubleheader with Wisconsin.

• NU is 399-237 (.627) all-time in the month of March. Nebraska is 6-6 in March this season after posting an 18-3 record in the month last season. Nebraska historically plays more games in March than in any other month, and the Huskers have posted a winning month of March in each of the last 15 seasons dating back to 1994.
• The Huskers are 2-0 at home this season. Nebraska finished 13-5 at Bowlin Stadium in 2009 and the Huskers are 112-45 since the stadium opened in 2002. NU has posted a winning home record for 32 straight seasons dating back to 1977.
• Five of Nebraska’s last six wins have all come by at least six runs, while six of the Huskers’ last seven losses have been by three runs or less, including three one-run losses.
• Nebraska is 0-6 this season in one-run games.
• Three Huskers have already hit at least four home runs this season. Last season, five Huskers hit four or more home runs after only one player hit at least four home runs in 2008 and no player hit four home runs in 2007.
• Nebraska tied the school record by turning three double plays at No. 10 Arizona State on March 14.
• Junior second baseman Julie Brechtel has not committed an error in 21 straight games, as she is perfect in 66 chances this season. The 21-game errorless streak is the second-longest streak of Brechtel’s career, as she posted a 32-game errorless streak last season. Overall, Brechtel has posted five separate 10-game stretches without an error in her career.
• Senior shortstop Whitney Barrett has not committed an error in her last 15 games, after committing nine errors in her first 13 games this season.
• The Nebraska pitching staff has struck out 207 batters in only 183.0 innings this season. The Huskers’ average of 7.9 strikeouts per seven innings ranks second in the Big 12 Conference and is on pace to be the third-highest total in school history.

Foland Already Setting Season Bests
Heidi Foland is enjoying an outstanding junior season, as she is batting .392 with five doubles, eight home runs and 19 RBIs while ranking among the top 10 players in the Big 12 Conference in five offensive categories. A three-year starter, Foland has already set career highs this season in runs (30), hits (38) and home runs (8), and she is one double and one RBI shy of tying her career high in each of those categories. She has produced eight more runs, nine more hits and two more home runs this season than in any other year of her career, a noteworthy accomplishment considering Foland appeared in at least 49 games in each of her first two seasons.

In the hits department, Foland’s previous career high was 29 hits in 2008, when she appeared in 53 games and earned 115 at bats. This year, Foland produced her 30th hit of the year in only her 22nd game and 76th at bat. From a runs scored perspective, Foland scored 22 runs in 49 games last season, a mark she had tied by the 21st game this year and surpassed by the 22nd game. Perhaps most impressively, Foland has hit more home runs this season than she did in her first two years combined. After homering six times in 102 games and 142 at bats through her first two seasons, Foland slugged seven home runs through the first 19 games and 63 at bats in 2010.

Rally Time
Nebraska rallied from a 4-0, fifth-inning deficit to defeat South Dakota last Wednesday to tie for the largest Husker comeback since 1999. The last time Nebraska came back to win after trailing by four runs was an 11-5 eight-inning victory at Iowa State in 2005. The Huskers trailed 5-1 after two innings before scoring 10 unanswered runs, including six runs in the eighth inning. NU also erased a four-run deficit against UNLV in 2004, making the South Dakota victory only the third time in the last decade that NU rallied to win after trailing by four runs.

The last time a Nebraska team came from five runs down to post a victory was in 1999, when NU rallied from a 5-0 fourth-inning deficit to defeat Kansas, 6-5 in eight innings at the Big 12 Tournament.

Hot Hitting Huskers
Nebraska boasts a .296 team batting average and the Huskers are averaging nearly eight his per game. As a result, several Huskers have strung together impressive hitting streaks this season. Junior Julie Brechtel is on a career-best 11-game hitting streak, while freshman Brooke Thomason has hit safely in nine straight games. Earlier this season, junior Heidi Foland posted a 10-game hitting streak.

Although complete statistics are unavailable prior to 2001, Brechtel and Foland are the first teammates to post double-digit hitting streaks in the same season since 2008 (Meghan Mullin and Darcy Rutherford) and only the second duo in the past 10 seasons.

Thomason has a chance to make it three Huskers with double-digit hitting streaks, including two active streaks. In the past 10 years, Nebraska has never had three players post a double-digit hitting streaks in the same season, nor have the Huskers ever had two players on a double-digit hitting streak at the same time.

Brechtel is batting .448 (13-for-29) during her 11-game hitting streak, while producing one double, three home runs and 16 RBIs. During her nine-game streak, Thomason is hitting .433 (13-for-30) with one double, four home runs and 10 RBIs. Brechtel and Thomason have hit fourth and fifth, respectively, in the Husker lineup in four straight games.