Rohr of the Crowd - May 4, 2012

Rohr of the Crowd is the official blog of Nate Rohr, the play-by-play announcer for Husker softball. Nate has called Nebraska softball games since 2004 and will call every game of the 2012 season. Nate is not employed by the University of Nebraska and the opinions and content of this blog are his own. Look for new blog entries weekly. 

The Loudest Roars: From the last two weeks, Ashley Hagemann sets the school record for career strikeouts at Nebraska with this third-inning strikeout of Creighton's Allie Mathewson.

And Mattie Fowler's three-run homer in the fourth in game two against Michigan State powered NU to its second win over the Spartans.

Stat of the Week: Borrowing from research from Matt Smith, the Huskers are tied for third in the Big Ten in road wins in conference play with four, trailing only Wisconsin with five and Michigan with seven.

Welcome to Pennant Race Softball
Heading into the next to last weekend of the regular season, Nebraska softball finds itself in a unique position. In the next six games, the Huskers could win a conference championship. Theycould qualify for regionals. They could be shut out of postseason, altogether.

Think of how often it is in sports that so much is on the line, in the regular season, with either the abyss of a long summer or the heights of a conference title in the first year in the Big Ten hanging in the balance of just two weekends. This sort of "ruthless justice", as Bob Costas called it in his book Fair Ball, used to be the state of being in baseball. Teams could play an entire 162-game season, win around 100 games and still fall short of the playoffs. Just ask the 1993 San Francisco Giants. In the final year of baseball's four-division format, the Giants and Braves battled to the season's final day for the N.L. West championship. San Francisco won 14 of 17 games to end the season, but the Braves were better, longer, going 39-11 over the final 50 games of the season to win the division while the Giants had to stay home.

But too often in college sports, that level of drama is gone. Other than in college football, where one slipup discards an entire season of work, 64 bids to most NCAA tournaments leaves a large margin for error.

The margin for error is virtually gone for Husker Softball in its pursuit of a bid to regionals. And yet, if things go well this weekend in Bloomington, the Huskers come home to Bowlin Stadium, where they're undefeated this year, for a three-game series against Wisconsin, with a chance to win the league.
The next six games will be nerve-wracking. They could be exciting. Hang on for the ride.

Bracketology
Now that we're nearing the end of the season, we have a better picture of the bracket and especially the bubble. That, with a little research this week of the last three years of the regionals fields has revealed the Huskers' to-do list for the next few weeks.

Job One: Get to the top 53 of the RPI. In the last three years, no team ranked worse than 53rd in the final RPI rankings has made it as an at-large to the NCAA Regionals. In fact, last year, teams ranked 42nd (North Carolina) and 43rd (Illinois) were left at home. But 53 is the line. The Huskers are currently 60th in RPI, so winning this weekend is imperative to push Nebraska up the RPI rankings.

Job Two: Get some help . Specifically, the fewer teams in the top 60 with a winning record ahead of Nebraska in the RPI rankings, the better the Huskers' chances of making it to regionals. Entering this week, 33rd-ranked Oklahoma State is 24-21 on the season, while Kentucky is 39th at 26-27 on the year. Northwestern is 49th in the RPI with a 21-26 record, while Arkansas is 50th at 25-24 on the year and Illinois in 51st with a 23-23 record. Pitt is 55th at 25-22 on the year, while Florida International is 57th with a 25-25 record. The more of these teams with losing records, the fewer teams ahead of Nebraska in the RPI that are eligible for at-large bids. Keep an especially close eye on those two SEC teams. The SEC will likely get seven teams into the NCAA regionals. Arkansas is already mathematically eliminated from playing the conference tournament next weekend, but in 2009, Mississippi State made regionals despite not making the conference tournament. Meanwhile, Kentucky would be the eighth SEC team in to regionals, if they make it. The Wildcats are already into the conference tournament. The SEC has gotten seven teams into the NCAAs each the last two years, but nine in 2009.

Job Three: Get even more help. When the Huskers narrowly made the regional field in 2010, it was striking how well the favorites performed in the conference tournaments. Only Creighton in the Missouri Valley Tournament pulled an upset, while three teams that would've been candidates for at-large bids (Lipscomb, Long Island and Radford) all won their conference tournaments.

This year, there are 30 automatic bids to the tournament, most going to winners of conference tournaments (the Big Ten, Pac-12, Big 12 and Ivy League among the notable exceptions, with the regular-season conference champion earning the automatic bid from those leagues). By my count, 18 conferences could be one-bid leagues, with the team earning the automatic bid gaining the only ticket from the conference to the regionals. Of those 18, 11 conferences will almost certainly be one-bid leagues, no matter what happens in the conference tournament (Atlantic Sun, Horizon, Ivy, MAAC, MEAC, Northeast, Ohio Valley, Pacific Coast, Patriot, SWAC, Summit). But in the other seven conferences, an upset in the conference tournament could push another team into the at-large pool. An upset in the America East (Boston U., 45th in the RPI), Atlantic-10 (UMass, 38th), Big South (Radford, 56th), Colonial (Hofstra, 48th), Southern (Georgia Southern, 52nd), Southland (Texas State, 43rd), and especially, the Sun Belt (Louisiana-Lafayette, 12th), could force the selection committee to use an at-large bid on one of those smaller conference schools, taking away another chance for NU to make it into the field.
Just as importantly, in the multi-bid leagues with tournaments, a team that would be in without the conference tournament championship needs to win for the Huskers to have their best shot at regionals. In the SEC, that means one of the top seven needs to capture the title (basically anyone but Kentucky). In the ACC, one of the top four needs to capture the conference's auto bid (Florida State, North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech).

Nebraska can render all this moot by winning the conference championship, of course. But if the three things listed above happen, Selection Sunday will be much less nerve-wracking, whether or not the Huskers can snag the Big Ten title.

Weekend Warmup: Indiana
Nebraska wraps the road portion of its regular-season schedule with a three-game series at Indiana. The Hoosiers are 24-25 on the season, 8-10 in Big Ten play. Indiana had been fairly proficient offensively in Big Ten play, averaging five runs a game through the first 15 games of its league schedule. But last weekend at Iowa, IU tallied just one run in three games, winning game one 1-0 in nine innings before losing the last two. The offense is led by Amanda Wagner, who is in the middle of a breakout season in which she's hitting .360 while hitting nine homers and 33 RBI. She's been even better in the conference, hitting .476 while slugging .905. Shannon Cawley has made a thunderous debut as a freshman, hitting .320 while hitting three homers. Bri Meyer has been a weapon in league play, hitting .339 with nine RBI. The Hoosiers have played most of conference season without three-year starting shortstop Breanna Saucedo, who was hitting .319 before an injury knocked her out for the season during the second conference game. In the circle, Indiana came into the year very green. Morgan Melloh threw every pitch in conference play and 86% of the innings overall while assembling an All-American senior season that saw her earn a 32-17 record with a 1.64 ERA, striking out 494 in 320 1/3 innings pitched. Only Meghan Murphy returned with pitching experience, and she only threw five innings as a freshman. This year, Murphy has split pitching duties with freshman Lora Olson. Murphy is 11-11 with a 4.91 ERA, striking out 84 in 158.1 innings pitched. She's been slightly better in Big Ten play, with a 5-4 record and a 4.36 ERA. Murphy is one of the few left-handed pitchers in the league. The right-hander Olson has similar overall numbers to Murphy (13-14, 4.71 ERA, 153 innings pitched, 85 strikeouts), but has struggled a bit more in conference play (3-6, 4.74 ERA, 54.2 innings pitched, 27 strikeouts). The Hoosiers' defense has been giving up nearly an unearned run a game in conference play.

That's all for now...talk to you tomorrow from Bloomington...

Go Big Red!

Nate