Baseball's stumble could prove costly

Nebraska had pieced together a résumé worthy of a Regional host. Then it went to Columbus, Ohio.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

Ohio State baseball entered the weekend under .500 in Big Ten play. It’s not anymore after sweeping No. 16 Nebraska in Columbus. A 2-1 loss Friday night could’ve served as a wake-up call for the Huskers, but things only deteriorated from there, with the Buckeyes taking Saturday’s game 7-3 and winning 10-1 in Sunday’s finale.

For the series, Nebraska was just 13-of-93 at the plate (.140) with just three extra-base hits (all doubles). The Huskers left 20 runners on base over the three-game series.

Bad time for the bats to go cold.

Nebraska entered the weekend looking like a solid bet to host a Regional if it could avoid a collapse against the middle of the Big Ten. The Huskers were 13^th in RPI last Monday, not a sure thing to host, but of the 16 hosts in last year’s NCAA Tournament, 15 of them ranked in the top 16 of RPI. There often isn’t a lot of mystery here.

Following the Columbus clubbing, Nebraska was probably on the outside looking in. Warren Nolan’s live RPI projection had the Huskers at 18^th Sunday night.¹ If that or something close to it holds until tournament time, it’s a potentially damaging development for this team in particular. Nebraska is currently 20-1 at home, 10-10 on the road.² It’s 12-12 against Quad 1 and 2 teams, 22-2 against Quads 3 and 4.

Maybe the surprising thing before the Ohio State sweep was that NU had pieced all this together—dominant at home, average on the road; even against the best teams on the schedule, lights out against the weaker—into a host-worthy résumé. But it had. And now it may have fallen apart over a weekend.

To win back what was lost and get back in the mix to host the first round, Nebraska (34-14, 17-7) probably needs to get to 40 wins. There are seven games left in the regular season, three at home against Iowa this weekend, the final mid-week game of the year at Creighton next week and a three-game series at Minnesota. The Big Ten Tournament in Omaha will follow, and there was at least some good news there.

Despite the sweep, Nebraska remained tied for second³ in the conference. The top four Big Ten finishers get automatic entry into the single-elimination portion of the conference tournament (Fri-Sun), where three wins will crown the champion. The 5 through 12 seeds have to battle it out mid-week (Tue-Thur) in a double-elimination bracket. Fall to the fifth seed or lower, and a team would need to win a minimum of five games to win the conference tournament.

Avoiding that fate, more than hosting a regional, might be Nebraska’s top objective now.

Odds & Ends

• Different diamond, different quality as Nebraska softball claimed the program’s first outright Big Ten title with a sweep of Penn State to finish the regular season 43-6 and 23-1 in conference play, three games clear of Oregon and UCLA. The Big Ten Tournament, hosted by Maryland, gets underway May 6, but the top-seeded Huskers don’t play until May 7. They await the winner of 8-seed Ohio State and 9-seed Michigan. All games will be available on BTN.

• Nebraska made it to the final two for 2027 5-star tight end Ahmad Hudson, but the two-sport star⁴ picked home-state LSU Sunday. The No. 1 tight end prospect in the country, Hudson would’ve ranked among the highest-rated recruits ever at NU if the Huskers had landed him. And maybe they still will. Recruiting’s different now with many more variables, including the chance to get a player down the line or the possibility that Lane Kiffin, following a season-opening loss to Clemson, might leave Baton Rouge to become a GA at Indiana. Can’t rule that out.

• Elsewhere in the extended college football universe: Wonderful Monds IV, a 4-star QB who reclassified to the 2027 recruiting class, picked Notre Dame late last week. Yes, he’s the grandson of former Husker All-American defensive back “Wonder” Monds, who was inducted into the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame in 2001.

1. It is live, so these projections are always changing.

2. And 4-3 in neutral site games.

3. By winning percentage, at least. The Huskers were tied with Oregon, which took two-of-three from NU last month and would have the head-to-head edge.

4. Hudson may also play basketball at LSU, something Nebraska offered as well.