[personal] Re: [Husker] Baseball

[jschlechte at usfamily.net]

Nice summary Skylar.  The statistics compared to other years definitely show a
down year in several areas.  Relative to other teams this year NU seem to have
finished about right in the conference.

Skylar summed up what seemed to be lacking this year in part as 
intangibles.  I
wonder if part of this is / was team chemistry, team leadership.  Mental
mistakes and lack of consistency speak to a lack of focus.  Of the last 6
series against Big 12 teams, NU won 5 of them.  But several of the losses were
just ugly.  At the beginning of the year I thought Watson would have an
absolutely MONSTER year.  His pitching was outstanding the year before and he
had an amazing summer.  Some games were gems, others were forgettable.

I certainly had hoped for a better year.  But I was impressed with how 
they hung
together and finished with a winning record in the Big 12.  That earned them a
well deserved tournament bid and a 2-2 record in the regional as a #3 
seed in a
tough regional was about as expected.  There are a couple other Big 12 teams
that had better years than NU and are headed home - Texas &  Missouri.  Baylor
is out while at this point only OSU is in the Supers facing Missouri's 
nemisis,
Louisville.  A&M plays Louisiana-Lafeyette tonight to see who gets to 
face Rice
in the Supers.

Baseball's a tough game.  I hope NU's attendence and support at home 
stays high.
The success of the past few seasons has made this past season a lot harder.
Alex Gordon and Nebraska's first CWS win left us wanting more.  So I'm already
eager for next year.

GBR,

-Jay

Quoting Skylar Dodds <sklarbodds at cox.net>:

> 7.  Intangibles.  One of the most frustrating things about this team is the
> lack of aggressive play.  We're 6th in the Big XII for stolen bases.
> EVERYTIME we get a runner on we sacrifice him over, giving away an out.  We
> rarely went from 1st to 3rd on a base hit.  Outside of actual 'errors' there
> were MANY mental mistakes all over the place.  Miscommunication, caught
> stealing at the worst time, missing hit and runs (I can remember a handful
> of those) and just overall sloppy play.