Huskers score seven unanswered to down Buckeyes
Senior starter Luis Alvarado couldn’t locate a breaking ball, the defense was scrambling to communicate and the offense picked up its struggles where it left off.
Then, Scott Schreiber blasted a leadoff home run in the fourth inning, and the Huskers never slowed down the rest of the way.
Alvarado pitched a career-high 7.2 innings, Schreiber knocked three hits for another multi-hit game and the Huskers pulled off a season momentum-shifting win with a 7-3 victory over Ohio State.
The Huskers scored seven straight to erase a nightmare start, finding hits from eight different players in the comeback. Alvarado allowed just two hits and no runs after the second inning, earning his second win of the season.
“The one thing he did fantastic was locate his fastball,” head coach Darin Erstad said in his postgame interview on the Husker Sports Network. “That’s probably the best command on his fastball I’ve seen him have as a starting pitcher.”
Despite Schreiber knocking a single in the first, Ohio State responded to jump on Alvarado early, plating a run on a double by Nick McGowan in the bottom frame. With NU’s offense unable to mount a threat, the Buckeyes seized near-complete control with a two run homer in the second.
Trailing 3-0 without a spark after three, Schreiber came to the plate and pulled the first pitch out over the left field wall for a leadoff home run. The Husker senior continuing his hot streak was just the spark plug the offense needed.
After a one-out walk, Zac Repinski doubled to the warning track in right, giving Nebraska two in scoring position and representing the tying run on second base. An RBI groundout and a Gunner Hellstrom single knotted the game at 3 on the next two at-bats, turning momentum sharply in the Huskers’ favor.
A leadoff single by Ohio State in the fourth would turn out to be the last hit for the Buckeyes until the eighth inning. Alvarado settled in and retired seven straight batters while finishing the fifth inning in seven pitches and the seventh in five.
Nebraska took the lead for good on a crucial error by Ohio State in the fifth. Angelo Altavilla laid down a sacrifice bunt down the third base line, and when the slow roller forced a scramble, Ohio State third baseman Conner Pohl threw wide of first base and watched the ball trickle into right field. Joe Acker scored on the play and Altavilla scored on the next to make it 5-3.
“I’ve just tried to keep things simple,” said Schreiber, who drove in Altavilla for the second run of the frame. “Just sticking to my approach and knowing that I can continue to work on that every single day.”
On the defensive side, Alvarado continued to mow down batters through the eighth inning, when a two-out single finally forced him out of the game. The Husker senior tossed a career-high 105 pitches, allowing seven hits, three runs and striking out five.
After Jake Hohensee slammed the door on the inning, Nebraska added some insurance in the ninth with a Mojo Hagge RBI triple and a pinch hit RBI single from Ben Klenke. Holding onto a 7-3 lead, Hohensee worked the bases loaded before striking out the game’s final batter and earning the save.
The win moved the Huskers to 14-12 on the season and evened the Big Ten record at 2-2. NU stopped an Ohio State streak of nine wins in its last 10 games and stopped a two-game skid of its own.
“At some point, you just have to say screw it,” Erstad said. “When this group does that and they just go play, they can be alright.”
The Huskers return to action in Columbus at 12:05 p.m. Saturday. Matt Waldron will take the mound in his second Saturday start of the season and NU will try to clinch its first Big Ten series win of the year.