Baseball Preview: Tony Gwynn Legacy tournament

The Nebraska baseball team (1-2, 0-0) heads to San Diego this weekend to take on three different opponents in the Tony Gwynn Legacy tournament. The Huskers will take on San Diego (3-1, 0-0) on Friday, San Diego State (3-1, 0-0) on Saturday and Arizona (3-1, 0-0) on Sunday. Aside from these opponents, the eight-team event also includes Iowa, USC, Southern Illinois and Seattle.

NU is coming off of their opening three-game series against Baylor in which they won only one of the three games. The Huskers started off their season with a convincing 19-9 win over the Bears where 11 of their runs were scored in the first inning. The second game of that series ended with Baylor hitting a walk-off single in the 10th inning to take game two. The series finale finished 7-2 in the Bears favor.

Nebraska has been a part of the Tony Gwynn Classic multiple times, including the most recent appearance in 2016 where they went 1-2 losing to San Diego and Arizona, but getting the better of Tulane.

(San Diego) Friday, 8 p.m.: LHP Gareth Stroh (1-0) vs. RHP Jack Hyde (0-0)

(San Diego State) Saturday, 8 p.m.: RHP Colby Gomes (0-0) vs. RHP Troy Melton (1-0)

(Arizona) Sunday, 12 p.m.: LHP Cade Povich (0-1) vs. TBD

New Faces: Freshmen Leighton Banjoff and Luke Boynton both made their debut for the Huskers last weekend. Boynton played on Sunday where he went 1-for-4 at the plate and Banjoff played all three days, accounting for two RBI and two earned runs. Both players hope to build on their successes heading to San Diego. On the mound, the Big Red saw five newcomers play, most notable of those was the sophomore left-handed pitcher Cade Povich. The Bellevue West product made his debut for Nebraska on Sunday where he started against Baylor. He threw four innings tallying up seven strikeouts and zero earned runs.

Explosive Offense: The Big Red not only scored 19 runs in the season opener, but scored 11 runs in their opening inning of the season. In that opening inning, the first 11 players that went up to the plate got on base and scored. Over the entire weekend, NU racked up 28 runs and 33 hits while batting .292 as a team. Nine Huskers accounted for multiple-hit weekends with six of those players having at least four hits. Senior Ty Roseberry and Sophomore Cam Chick led the team with five hits each.

Players to keep an eye on: Junior Aaron Palensky enters the tournament with the longest standing hitting streak on the team (6), which includes last season. Palensky also holds the longest current on-base streak on the team (24), which goes all the way back to Apr. 23, 2019. Sophomore Spencer Schwellenbach holds the second longest-standing on-base streak (15). Senior Luke Roskam is only four RBI's away from reaching 100 career RBI's.

San Diego: Nebraska has matched up against the Toreros only three times, and the Huskers lead the all time series 2-1. However, the most recent matchup was in 2016 where San Diego beat the Big Red 17-5 in the Tony Gwynn Classic. The Toreros went 32-21 last season and finished tied for sixth in the West Coast Conference.

San Diego State: The Aztecs come into the weekend after a 8-4 win on Tuesday night over Cal State Fullerton. SDSU will play their first game of the weekend against Iowa on Friday night. The Aztecs went 32-25 overall last season, and went 16-13 in the Mountain West placing them in second.

Arizona: Last season Arizona went 32-24, finishing in sixth in the Pac-12 with a conference record of 15-14. The Wildcats started their season this year with a opening series sweep against Albany, but fell to Minnesota on Monday by a score of 5-2. Arizona will play Southern Illinois on Friday, followed by Iowa on Saturday.