Rohr of the Crowd - March 8, 2013

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 2013 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. 

Stat of the Week: Husker pitching has allowed a run in just four of the last 40 innings it has pitched.

The Loudest Rohrs: Three for the week: From the game two win Saturday against Oklahoma, Tatum Edwards gives the Huskers the lead with a fifth-inning home run. In the seventh, with two on and two out, Emily Lockman strikes out Keilani Ricketts. From game two Sunday at Oklahoma State, Rhonda Revelle becomes the winningest coach in any sport at the University of Nebraska with her 768th career win.

Revelle Tops the Wins Chart
Nebraska's win Sunday over Oklahoma State, 10-5, in the second game of a doubleheader made Rhonda Revelle the winningest coach in the history of Husker Athletics, her 768th career win at NU. d But most coaches pride themselves not on their resumes, but on the lives they've touched, the futures they've made better. I never put on a red jersey. I never gobbled up a nasty hop from a fungo Coach hit to me. But having dealt with the Nebraska Softball program on a consistent basis the last 10 years has made my life better.

The day before the home opener in 2004, Matt Smith took me over to the offices at Bowlin Stadium to introduce me to the coaches and to Anita Jensen, the secretary for Husker Softball. I was only serving as the public address announcer, only reading the hitters' names as they came to the plate, but because I had a role in the program on gameday, I mattered to Coach Revelle. She asked me, "Have you gone over the names? Have you made them your own?" To go from someone whose most important job with Husker Athletics was running box scores up and down the stairs at the Devaney Center during basketball games to now mattering enough to where a future Hall-of-Fame coach truly cared about the job I did made me feel like I was important to Husker Softball. It truly gave me a place in the athletic department I'd lived and died with my entire life. The day before the first home game for her team in an eventual championship season, Coach Revelle made me feel better about myself, and made my day and life better.

My involvement with the softball program grew. Later that year, I started doing play-by-play of the games on Huskers.com. By the next year, I was making a few bus trips with the Huskers every year. We were making our way back from down south after a long weekend, and we'd stopped at a fast-food restaurant to grab a meal on the way home. I had finished my meal (rapidly, I'm sure), and was starting to leave the table. Some trash remained at my spot at the table. Coach Revelle happened to see that, and nudged me, saying, "Make sure to pick that up...leave it (this place) better than you found it!" I dutifully grabbed the wrapper and pitched it away.

Those are the two great lessons I've taken from my 10 years with the program Coach Revelle built: Make each task that comes to you your own and leave everywhere you go better than you found it. After all, that what Coach Revelle has done with the Husker Softball program in 21 years.

Without question, the Nebraska Softball program is better in 2013 than the one that faced Coach Revelle in 1993. When she returned to her alma mater, the Huskers had gone from qualifying for the WCWS in four of five years to missing four straight NCAA tournaments and stumbling to a 23-30 record in 1992, just the second time in 15 years that Nebraska finished under .500. Within three years, the Huskers were back in the NCAA Regionals. Within six, they had won the conference championship and had returned to the WCWS. They've remained contenders for both the league crown and Oklahoma City since then. Despite facing numerous challenges, from the small population base to the distance to the main talent bases, to the poor weather in which to train a good chunk of the season to the competition for athletes here in Nebraska, since both volleyball and softball are played in the spring, Coach Revelle has built one of the nation's elite programs. Similtaneously, the Huskers are among the strongest academic programs in the country, with 13 academic All-America awards earned by Nebraska under Revelle's watch. In short, this is a program strong in every area.

Being around this program on roadtrips and on gamedays, you see Coach Revelle's positive spirit reflected in our players every time they pause to sign a t-shirt at a tournament or return a "Go Big Red" shouted at them in the airport or a hotel lobby. These players compete relentlessly and intently, but with respect for the umpires and for their opponents. They work hard, on and off the field. They care deeply about this school and representing it well. This is a team that is shaped in the image of its coach.

Of course, Coach Revelle didn't do all this alone. She'd probably point out that, while she's the winningest head coach at Nebraska, the winningest Husker coach is actually associate head coach Lori Sippel, who had a 45-win headstart on Revelle since she was an assistant for the two years preceding Revelle's tenure. Revelle would also point out that Diane Miller has been a big reason why Nebraska has won over 150 games in the last four-plus years. And she'd probably mention that all the coaching in the world doesn't do any good if the players aren't capable. But someone has to hire the staff and someone has to recruit the players and make the final decisions as to which ones to add to the program. Coach Revelle's leadership the past 21 years for this program has built it into one of which all Nebraskans and Husker fans can be proud.

Becoming the head coach at Nebraska with the most wins doesn't cement Coach Revelle as the best in school history, since softball and baseball play far more games than any other sport on campus. But Revelle setting the wins record gives us as good an excuse as any to reflect on what she's built here at Nebraska, and how lucky the University of Nebraska has been to have her in the dugout the last 21 years.

At the very least, I've been lucky to work with her and the program she's built the last 10 years.

A really, really good weekend in Oklahoma
It takes an accomplishment 21 years in the making to knock beating No. 1 to the second story of the weekend. It doesn't diminish how sweet Saturday's 1-0 win over No. 1 Oklahoma was. Not only was it the Sooners' first loss of the year, but it was also on the heels of a 10-3 loss which went from competitive (3-3 tie, bottom of the fifth, two outs, no one on) to trouncing in the blink of an eye.

I must admit, I was pretty discouraged in the booth in Norman. This Oklahoma team is the most dominant I can remember at this time of the year. They have two pitchers in Keilani Ricketts and Michelle Gascoigne who are legitimate All-America candidates. Speaking of Ricketts, her only competition for National Player of the Year is if you split up her work in the circle and at the plate, and tried to decide where she'd done better. The lineup is a touch unbalanced, but there is no easy out, and the first five hitters (along with No. 9 hitter Brianna Turang) compose a fearsome six-player string in the lineup. I was not optimistic about the Huskers chances heading to OU in the first place, and then the blowout loss after a tight 2-0 loss in Cathedral City the week before discouraged me even more.

The Sooners wasted no time asserting their control of the game. Lauren Chamberlain ripped a single to right to lead off the bottom of the first. She was caught stealing with the next batter up, but then Jessica Shults singled to right. Ricketts drew a walk, and Shelby Pendley hit a flare single to center. OU aggressively sent Shults to the plate, testing the solid arm of KiKi Stokes. Stokes gunned down Shults at the plate to keep the game scoreless. Maybe I should have known that that this was Nebraska's day. Chamberlain led off the third with a single, was bunted to second, but freshman pitcher Emily Lockman stepped up got ground ball outs from Shults and Ricketts to end the inning. Then in the fourth, runners were at second and third with one out, before Lockman got a grounder to short and a liner right back to her to start to get out of the jam. After the pesky Briana Turang drew a walk, Chamberlain came to the plate in a golden opportunity to push the Sooners out front. But she flied to right to end the inning, and Lockman again showed great composure to get one of the nation's top batters out to keep the game scoreless.

The next batter in the game, Tatum Edwards, led off the bottom of the fifth with a homer down the left-field line and, from there, Lockman picked up steam, retiring six of the next seven she faced. That still left a fateful seventh, with Husker pest Turang leading off the inning (in the three innings in which OU had scored against Nebraska, Turang had led off with a single in two of them). Turang lined a single to left, setting the table for the potent top of the order. Pop ups by Chamberlain and Casey drew the Huskers to the brink, but then Shults drew a walk to put the winning run on base with two outs and the nation's best player, Ricketts, coming to the plate. Lockman wasted no time, jumping ahead 0-2. But as Lockman tried to finish off Ricketts, she sprayed six foul balls in all directions, just waiting for the freshman to make a mistake. For the seventh time, Lockman tried to finish off Ricketts with the count 0-2. She settled on throwing a changeup. The speed difference is enough to fool many hitters, but not only is Ricketts better than most hitters, but a changeup that catches too much of the plate can be served into the shorter reaches of the outfield for a single (which would've tied the game), and if Ricketts picks up on a changeup left out over the plate, Ricketts is big enough and strong enough to blast toward Oklahoma City, and nearly hit it there.

But Lockman showed remarkable guts and incredible confidence to throw that changeup over the inside corner. Ricketts was frozen, and the upset was complete.

Lockman is a uniquely successful freshman pitcher. Most freshmen who win at the college level come to college with dominant if erratic stuff, blowing away hitters with their velocity and the bite on their rise ball, while at the same time trying to ride their own waves of poor command and rattled nerves. On the other hand, Lockman's stuff won't blow many hitters away, but her total confidence in her stuff and her ability to stay in the moment (pitch in the "future perfect tense, as George Will put it in his book about baseball, Men At Work) has allowed her to work through the jams she's found herself in while allowing minimal damage. Her outing Sunday against Oklahoma State was a prime example of Lockman's calm in the circle. A Cowgirl lineup that had sputtered to under three runs per game had clubbed two home runs off Lockman to erase a 5-0 NU after half-an-inning, tying the game at five through one inning. Lockman shook off the bad start, surrendered just three more hits the rest of the way, and the Huskers cruised to a 10-5 victory in the second game.

Usually, it takes a while for freshmen to pick up that mental toughness. But Lockman has had it since day one. She and Tatum Edwards have been a pleasant surprise in the circle for the Huskers in the first month of the year.

Week Warmup: Wichita State and UNO
Weather permitting, the Huskers are scheduled for a three-game series against Wichita State starting Saturday in Wichita. The Shockers were supposed to host Oklahoma in a doubleheader Wednesday, but wet conditions at Wilkins Stadium forced the postponement of that matchup. There's a 60 percent chance of rain Friday night and a 70 percent chance of rain Saturday. Keep an eye on Huskers.com and Twitter.com/HuskerSoftball for potential schedule changes. Wichita State is 9-9 on the year, but had been playing better with wins in five straight and six of seven games until the Shox dumped their last game at the Coastal Carolina Invitational, a 7-6 decision to Albany. WSU has struggled somewhat offensively, scoring 3.7 runs per game and hitting .262 as a team. Sophomore Brianne Bond is the reigning Missouri Valley Player of the Week after hitting 7-for-14 last weekend in South Carolina, driving in seven runs. Bond had started the year 5-for-22. Melanie Jaegers is hitting .356 with 10 stolen bases, while Layne Greenlee and Megan McCracken are tied for the team lead with three homers each. McCracken's stat line is especially odd, as she's hitting just 6-for-36 on the year, but half of her hits are home runs. The pitching has been solid for the Shockers with a team ERA of 2.51. Lefty Sloane Anderson and righty Katie Armagost basically split the starts in the circle. Neither is a big strikeout pitcher, with both striking out just over four batters per game. But the Shox have done a good job throwing strikes, allowing just over 2.5 walks per game. Defensively, WSU has committed 20 errors, but surrendered just eight unearned runs per game.

Weather may also play a factor in Nebraska's game at UNO Tuesday. The weather is expected to be dry Tuesday, but wet conditions this weekend plus not particularly warm temperatures early next week may make it tough to have UNO's field dried out by Tuesday. The weather might be the only thing that can cool the Mavericks, who are off to a glittering 17-2 start in their second season as a Division I program. UNO's only losses are to Iowa (2-1, Feb. 16) and to No. 19 Washington (10-2, March 3). A stingy pitching staff has ben the primary driving force behind the Mavs hot start, as they've allowed over three runs just twice while pitching to a team ERA of 1.93. Dana Elsasser has gotten the bulk of the work in the circle. The Hershey, Neb., native has pitched to a 9-2 record with a 1.88 ERA, striking out 48 in 78 innings. The Mavs have been tough as well with the bats, scoring over six runs a game while hitting .314 as a team. Six of nine regulars are hitting better than .300, led by Allie Mathewson. The Creighton transfer is hitting .391 with eight home runs and 22 RBI with seven stolen bases. Amber Lutmer leads UNO in power hitting, with nine homers and 30 RBI. The Mavs have stolen 25 bases in 19 games. They're in action this weekend in Nashville against Indiana, Saint Louis, Alabama State, Tennessee State and Mississippi Valley State.

That's all for now...we'll talk to you tomorrow (hopefully!) from Wichita...

Go Big Red!

Nate