Post by nu5ncbigred on May 27, 2024 15:04:16 GMT -5
Huskers will head to Stillwater regional to play Gators
Nebraska has its matchup and regional set for the NCAA tourney.
Brian Christopherson3 hrs
Husker baseball has its NCAA Tournament assignment, which comes with an old Big Eight flavor. It's off to Stillwater, Okla.
Fresh off winning its first Big Ten Tournament, Nebraska (39-20) will face the Florida Gators (28-27) on Friday. Oklahoma State, the No. 11 overall seed and host school, will face Niagara on the other side. The winner of the region would face the champion of the Clemson regional in the best-of-3 Super Regional.
It'll mark Nebraska's 18th appearance in the NCAA Tournament as the Huskers try to make it win a regional for the fifth time in school history. NU was in Oklahoma City in 2019 for a regional when Darin Erstad was coach. Nebraska won its first game that year then lost 6-5 when Oklahoma State hit a three-run homer in the ninth inning that proved the pivotal blow in that season's quest.
To the current, the Gators are a usual college baseball power but hovered around the .500 mark this season, finishing 28-27. Florida finished 13-17 in the difficult SEC.
Florida has been starting to get the bats going more of late, standing toe-to-toe in a late-season series against nationally seeded Kentucky, winning one game 10-1 and losing two others in extra innings. The Gators then took two out of three from Georgia before losing to Vanderbilt in the SEC Tournament. Florida was considered a bubble team but its strength of schedule helped boost it into the field, Matt Hogue, the chairman of the committee, told ESPN during the selection show.
Not an easy matchup, but Nebraska is riding with some confidence after winning five in a row this past week in Omaha to win the conference tournament.
"Once you get to the postseason it's five wins to Omaha. Kind of that carrot out there dangled for this group. You have 13,000 people out there for this game. Imagine what it's like getting to Nebraska to this venue for the College World Series," Husker head coach Will Bolt said on Sunday. "It's five wins away. It can seem like this far-reaching thing, but you get your foot in the door in regionals, it's five wins to get to Omaha. It's hard, it's tough to do it. But you got to talk about it and you got to be able to visualize that."
The Big Ten did as well in the brackets as could have been hoped.
Illinois, which won the Big Ten regular-season title, and Indiana, which the Huskers swept on Saturday en route to the title, also found their names on the brackets, giving the league three teams in the tourney.
Nebraska was king of that hill on Sunday, beating Penn State 2-1 on Sunday, showing some depth this past week by climbing through the losers' bracket to win the tourney.
It gave NU an automatic bid, though the Huskers were confident they were going to be in the tournament no matter what happened last week in Omaha.
"I'm not sure I've ever been around a group of young men quite like these and just how absolutely resilient they are," Bolt said. "That's the word to describe this group and how tough they are, how much they love each other, how much they have each other's back. And they've got to get challenged along the way too. That's our job as coaches is to challenge them when they need it. We need to put our arms around them when we need it."
Nebraska has its matchup and regional set for the NCAA tourney.
Brian Christopherson3 hrs
Husker baseball has its NCAA Tournament assignment, which comes with an old Big Eight flavor. It's off to Stillwater, Okla.
Fresh off winning its first Big Ten Tournament, Nebraska (39-20) will face the Florida Gators (28-27) on Friday. Oklahoma State, the No. 11 overall seed and host school, will face Niagara on the other side. The winner of the region would face the champion of the Clemson regional in the best-of-3 Super Regional.
It'll mark Nebraska's 18th appearance in the NCAA Tournament as the Huskers try to make it win a regional for the fifth time in school history. NU was in Oklahoma City in 2019 for a regional when Darin Erstad was coach. Nebraska won its first game that year then lost 6-5 when Oklahoma State hit a three-run homer in the ninth inning that proved the pivotal blow in that season's quest.
To the current, the Gators are a usual college baseball power but hovered around the .500 mark this season, finishing 28-27. Florida finished 13-17 in the difficult SEC.
Florida has been starting to get the bats going more of late, standing toe-to-toe in a late-season series against nationally seeded Kentucky, winning one game 10-1 and losing two others in extra innings. The Gators then took two out of three from Georgia before losing to Vanderbilt in the SEC Tournament. Florida was considered a bubble team but its strength of schedule helped boost it into the field, Matt Hogue, the chairman of the committee, told ESPN during the selection show.
Not an easy matchup, but Nebraska is riding with some confidence after winning five in a row this past week in Omaha to win the conference tournament.
"Once you get to the postseason it's five wins to Omaha. Kind of that carrot out there dangled for this group. You have 13,000 people out there for this game. Imagine what it's like getting to Nebraska to this venue for the College World Series," Husker head coach Will Bolt said on Sunday. "It's five wins away. It can seem like this far-reaching thing, but you get your foot in the door in regionals, it's five wins to get to Omaha. It's hard, it's tough to do it. But you got to talk about it and you got to be able to visualize that."
The Big Ten did as well in the brackets as could have been hoped.
Illinois, which won the Big Ten regular-season title, and Indiana, which the Huskers swept on Saturday en route to the title, also found their names on the brackets, giving the league three teams in the tourney.
Nebraska was king of that hill on Sunday, beating Penn State 2-1 on Sunday, showing some depth this past week by climbing through the losers' bracket to win the tourney.
It gave NU an automatic bid, though the Huskers were confident they were going to be in the tournament no matter what happened last week in Omaha.
"I'm not sure I've ever been around a group of young men quite like these and just how absolutely resilient they are," Bolt said. "That's the word to describe this group and how tough they are, how much they love each other, how much they have each other's back. And they've got to get challenged along the way too. That's our job as coaches is to challenge them when they need it. We need to put our arms around them when we need it."
