A Huskers weekend that went places
Some brilliance on the diamond(s), the saddest news and a rally that might resonate.
The weekend that was in Nebraska athletics offered some brilliance on the diamond(s), the saddest news and a rally that might resonate for men’s basketball. Let’s get to it.
Nebraska softball would’ve been considered a heavy favorite entering the Troy Cox Classic in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and it left the weekend only having bolstered that respect. The 17th-ranked Huskers won five games by run rule, outscoring Texas A&M Corpus-Christi, New Mexico State, Montana (twice) and Northern Colorado by a combined 69-9.
Ace Jordy Bahl only threw once over the weekend—throwing 5 shutout innings in the 10-0 win over host NMSU—but she made her presence felt at the plate, going 10-16 with a triple, four home runs and eight RBIs.
The competition steps up this week over four days at the Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic in California where the Huskers (8-2) will face No. 231 Baylor, No. 4 UCLA, No. 14 Duke, San Jose State, Howard and Utah.
Nebraska baseball faced a tougher road out of the gates in Arizona, dropping its season opener 10-5 to UC Irvine in a frustrating debut for a team ranked 24th to start the season. The Huskers responded a day later, however, knocking off No. 16 Vanderbilt 6-4. Left fielder Gabe Swenson drove in all 6 runs, going 3-for-4 at the plate with two doubles and a home run as NU got a good collaborative effort from the pitching staff.
The Huskers topped San Diego State 13-0 to exit the weekend 2-1 after the tough start and will face Grand Canyon today in Phoenix at 2 p.m.
More valuable than any win, however, Husker baseball etched a memory that won’t fade for Nebraska fans over the weekend.
Thank you, Greg
Saturday brought the sad news that Greg Sharpe, the voice of Nebraska football and baseball, had passed following his battle with cancer.
Outside of maybe professional baseball, I can’t think of a sport where the play-by-play voice of the team becomes a more essential thread in the grand quilt than college football. For many, it’s not just a way to follow the game, but theway, not just the call, but your call. It’s not easy to reach that level. Getting there and staying there is hard-earned. Greg got there.
I didn’t know him as well as many of my colleagues must have. We’d see each other occasionally, usually on the road for football. I came to hope I’d bump into him because most of our conversations were always the same. It would be a couple of hours before kickoff somewhere, and he’d always say, “Well, what do you think?” It wasn’t just small talk. We’d talk football for as many minutes as we had, share our ideas, and that would be that—just talking ball.
In 2022, I got off my overnight flight to Dublin at 5 a.m., found a cab and rode through the empty streets to the media hotel. I left my phone in the cab—annoying any time, but good enough for a full-on “you idiot” panic when you’re exhausted and just arrived in a new country. The driver got all the way back to the airport, a 25-minute drive with no traffic, before it dawned on me to play the lost-my-phone alert and hope for the best. Because this is Ireland, 30 minutes later my phone just showed up at the hotel, I paid for its ride, gave the justifiably annoyed driver a 50 and walked back up the hotel stairs grateful and shameful.
The first person I saw back inside was Greg, fresh cup of coffee at a café table and getting to work on his notes. I did the sort of thing I never do—I asked if I could join him.
First question, “Well, what do you think?” We had the whole, sure-to-be-tense season ahead to discuss, Northwestern’s strengths and weaknesses, football.
I wish it wasn’t the last chance I had to have that sort of chat in person, but thank you, Greg. Then and always.
It all works out in the end
After a no-shame loss at home to Maryland that featured an under-the-weather Brice Williams, I felt a bit foolish when Nebraska trailed Northwestern (13-12, 4-10, entering Sunday) 36-21 at the half. The lead grew to 20 just 45 seconds into the second half.
Did I really just write a week ago about how this team had gutted its way back into not just NCAA Tournament contention, but a pretty prime position? Were we going to be back to the bubble after seven days and a can’t-have-it loss in Evanston?
Instead, The Movie got a bit better. An 11-0 run before the 11-minute mark put the Huskers back in the game. Nebraska shot 60.9% in the second half, including 62.5% from 3, after shooting 27.3% and 10.0% in the first. Maybe not the path to victory2 a team wants to traverse every time out, but it added up in the end. Juwan Gary (32 minutes) and Williams (38) combined for 38 points while Braxton Meah added a vital 10 points and nine rebounds off the bench.
The Huskers are back on the road Wednesday at Penn State.
Rankings as of Sunday.
This has never really been my thing, but if the only thing that makes a Nebraska win better is a corresponding Creighton loss…well…Sunday was a movie, too. I watched both teams as part of my quad box. As Northwestern was building a 20-point lead on Nebraska, No. 24 Creighton was taking the fight to No. 9 St. John’s in Madison Square Garden. The mind goes where it goes. “Of course, I thought, Nebraska’s going to drop this game it has no business losing while the Jays grab a huge road win. Husker fans will love that.” Then both games flipped at nearly the same time and the entire emotional spectrum had been covered. Funny how things work out sometimes.