No. 24 Huskers Clinch Road Sweep in Saturday Slugfest

No. 24 Nebraska slugged its way to a series sweep over Minnesota with a 14-11 win on Saturday afternoon in Minneapolis, as the Huskers improved to 41-14 overall and 23-7 in Big Ten play.

Nebraska tallied 14 runs on 14 hits and one error, while Minnesota scored 11 runs on 16 hits and five errors.

Jett Buck paced the Big Red offense with a 3-for-5 afternoon, failing a triple shy of the cycle while driving in four runs and scoring twice. Case Sanderson was 3-for-4 with two doubles, a home run, three RBI and three runs scored. Rhett Stokes finished 2-for-6 with two RBI and a solo homer, and Drew Grego doubled and had a pair of hits.

Mac Moyer went 1-for-1 with a home run, two runs driven in and four walks. Jeter Worthley, Trey Fikes and Joshua Overbeek recorded one hit apiece.

Gavin Blachowicz started and worked 4.2 innings, allowing six runs on 10 hits with six strikeouts. Colin Nowaczyk and Caleb Clark each made a brief appearance before Pryce Bender settled things down, tossing 2.1 innings of one-run ball to earn the win and improve to 1-0. J’Shawn Unger closed it out with a scoreless ninth for his 11th season of the season, tying Thom Ott for ninth-most in season saves in program history.

Nebraska wasted no time in the first, as Moyer reached on a hit by pitch and came around to score on a Sanderson sacrifice fly to give the Huskers an early 1-0 lead.

The Huskers tacked on three more in the second to stretch the lead to 4-0 after Buck doubled home Overbeek and Moyer launched a two-run homer off the scoreboard in right field.

Minnesota answered with a three-spot in the second. A two-run homer plated the Gophers’ first two runs, and an RBI double to right field brought Minnesota within a run after two innings.

The Big Red added four more runs in the third to grab an 8-3 lead through three innings. Fikes’ RBI double to the alley in left-center filed opened the scoring before Buck blasted a three-run homer into the trees in left-center field.

The Huskers enlarged the lead to eight with a sacrifice fly by Overbeek and a two-run single from Stokes that pushed the Big Red’s lead to 11-3 in the fourth.

Minnesota immediately got one of the runs back on a solo homer to send an 11-4 game into the fifth inning.

The Gophers added two more in the bottom of the fifth with a two-run homer before Stokes lined a solo homer in the top of the sixth to make it a 12-6 game.

Minnesota climbed back within two runs after a four-run frame in the bottom of the sixth that featured a solo homer, two-RBI single and a sacrifice fly.

Carey reached on an error to being the seventh, setting up Sanderson’s 434-foot two-run homer to left-center field that extended NU’s lead to 14-10.

A solo homer in the bottom of the eighth brought the Gophers within 14-11, but Unger kept Minnesota off the board in the bottom of the ninth to clinch Nebraska’s series sweep on Saturday afternoon.