Saturday, May 31, 2008 4:20 PM CDT
Eastern Illinois baseball falls 13-10
BY CURT McKEEVER/Lee News Service
LINCOLN, Neb. — Just three innings into Nebraska’s NCAA regional opener against Eastern Illinois in Haymarket Park Friday afternoon Dan Jennings had given up two home runs — as many as he had during the first 42 appearances for the Huskers.
Then, Brett Nommensen’s two-run double with two outs in the fourth silenced all but a handful of the 6,367 on hand, as it gave the fourth-seeded Panthers a 5-3 lead and the hook to Jennings.
And then this: Jordan Tokarz hit a nub grounder that reliever Thad Weber watched roll dead on the third-base foul line for an infield single.
Indeed, there were some strange things going on in NU’s home park.
“It just sits there on the chalk, so . . . yeah, a little bit (weird),” Weber said. “But that’s how baseball is.”
You want more weirdness?
How about Nebraska answering with four runs in the bottom half that was keyed by Mitch Abeita’s two-run, one-out single and Tyler Farst’s two-run homer with two outs that put the home team ahead for good in its 13-10 slugfest victory.
Yes, 13-10, the same score as the last game Nebraska played and won in Haymarket against Texas A&M on May 11, the only other time this season coach Mike Anderson’s club won a contest in which both teams reached double figures.
But there’s more for a squad that’s now 41-14-1 and about to face UC Irvine or Oral Roberts in a battle of first-round winners at 7:05 p.m. today.
With the wind blowing out to every part of the park, made even more hitter-friendly by hot and sticky conditions, the Huskers, who’d socked only 33 homers all season, produced their first four-homer game in two years.
They also got hits from every starter, while scoring in seven of eight innings, and got enough quality pitching to hold Eastern Illinois scoreless in five innings.
Added together, it was just enough for them to produce the 19th victory in 24 home NCAA Tournament games.
“I’ve never seen this ball park play like this,” said the sixth-year coach Anderson. “Unique day. It added a lot of challenges.”
Just ask Panthers’ coach Jim Schmitz.
When he saw Nebraska’s Jake Opitz hit a first-inning fly ball to right field, “I actually said to my assistant, ‘Good job,’ put my head down . . . and he said, ‘Hey, you might want to look again because it’s out of here,” Schmitz said. “. . . By that home run, we knew it was going to be a long game.”
Opitz would add to that two-run shot a seventh-inning solo homer that made him the first Husker this season to hit more than one in a game.
And in the eighth, Craig Corriston, making his first start as the designated hitter, smacked a two-run blast beyond left field that made it 13-7 — meaning Alex Gee’s three-run homer in the top of the ninth off Aaron Pribanic was, for the Huskers, a harmless seventh and final display of long-ball power.
“We started scoring, I really thought we had a chance,” Schmitz said. “Jennings wasn’t very sharp and we got them to make a move. . . . Obviously, Nebraska did a great job of coming back.
“They did a great job with two strikes, really battling and going away with pitches. They hacked early on and they hacked with good counts, but when they get two strikes their guys put the ball in play.”
Good enough to improve their record this season when out-hitting an opponent to 33-0. NU’s 13-hit attack also left it 22-1-1 when producing at least 10 in a game.
“We were going to hit-and-run, and do some bunts and some things that way. I changed that immediately,” Anderson said. “I didn’t want to put us in a position where we were giving up outs when somebody might hit one up in the air and get it out of here.”
Excuse Anderson for wondering if he really said that. It took 56 games into a season for those words to come out.
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