Nebraska baseball remains alive for its third regular season Big Ten championship and the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament.
The Huskers took care of business against Michigan State in a 2-1 road victory Thursday night in East Lansing. They got the job done behind the typically superb Brett Sears and a second consecutive clutch pitching performance from reliever Caleb Clark.
Sears (W, 8-0): 6.2 IP, 6 H, 1 ER 1 BB, 4 K on 94 pitches; retired 20 of 25 batters faced
Clark (S, 1): 2.1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 1 K on 32 pitches
Sears, who recorded his 11th quality start of the season, moved to 8-0 on the year, becoming just the second pitcher in program history to reach an 8-0 record in a season since 1999. Before Thursday night, Brian Duensing was the lone NU hurler to record the feat after beginning the 2005 campaign with an 8-0 mark.
Ben Columbus led the Huskers (33-18, 15-7 Big Ten) at the plate, going 3-for-4 with an RBI. Joshua Overbeek had two hits with a double and an RBI, and Rhett Stokes was 2-for-3 with a double and a run scored while Tyler Stone scored the Huskers’ other run of the night.
Game 2 between the Huskers and Spartans (23-26, 10-12) is coming your way at 4 p.m. CT today and will be broadcast on Big Ten Network.
Meanwhile, first-place Illinois also kept the lead pace in a fun, potentially thrilling race to win the Big Ten's regular season crown and tourney top seed as the Illini outlasted Purdue, 5-4, Thursday night in West Lafayette.
The Huskers remain in sole possession of second place and one game back of Illinois in the conference standings. Illinois and Nebraska are the only teams that remain alive for the Big Ten title and the B1G Tournament's No. 1 seed. Indiana, Michigan and Purdue have been eliminated from the title chase.
Below are all of Nebraska's title-clinching scenarios with all of the situations that could play out in which the Huskers would earn either the No. 1 seed, No. 2 seed or No. 3 seed in the B1G Tournament.
Also, we have all of the final scores from around the league Thursday night, Friday's conference schedule, the updated Big Ten standings, plus extra notes & updates on game broadcasts and this weekend's weather forecasts in the three key host cities.
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NEBRASKA'S TITLE-CLINCHING SCENARIOS
Thursday night's win over Michigan State – combined with the results of Illinois-Purdue and Michigan-Indiana – make the race for No. 1 much simpler as we are down to a two-team chase.
