Waldron, Schreiber power Huskers past Minnesota
LINCOLN, Neb. - Making his first conference start in two years, Matt Waldron stood on the mound facing what would be his final batter of the day.
On his 93rd offering of Saturday afternoon, the Husker junior whipped in his hardest pitch and caught the batter looking, inducing perhaps the loudest roar at Haymarket Park all season.
Waldron quieted the Minnesota bats for seven innings, Scott Schreiber pounded two home runs to the opposite field and Nebraska overwhelmed Minnesota 8-2 to tie the series. In a game delayed more than an hour due to temperature concerns, the defending Big Ten champs picked up their first conference win.
Nebraska’s junior right-hander scattered eight hits over 7.0 innings, allowing just one multi-hit inning and one earned run in the five-strikeout, no-walk performance.
“He came out with great height on his fastball and was throwing his breaking ball and changeup for a strike,” head coach Darin Erstad said of Waldron. “You’re mixing three pitches like that, you’ve got a fighting chance.
“We needed a big start from him, and boy, did he ever deliver.”
The Huskers gave their starter plenty of run support throughout. Scoring runs in each of the first five innings, NU was determined to shrug off Friday’s one-run outing.
Schreiber got things rolling in the first after a leadoff single by Zac Repinski. The powerful senior went closed on a 3-1 pitch to send it past the playground structure in Haymarket Park’s right field complex.
Two innings later, he would do it again, sending a few ballpark patrons out to check on their cars after a towering solo shot cleared the second fence into the parking lot.
“I just got set up by having good pitch selection and not chasing balls down in the dirt,” Schreiber said. “I was able to get a fastball over the plate and I was able to stay on it and hit it out.”
Aside from the home runs, it was mostly a manufacturing day for the Nebraska offense. The Huskers scored on a groundout in the second and sacrifice flies in the fourth and fifth. Schreiber’s multi-hit day lit up the scoreboard, but NU scored runs off the bats of Repinski, Luke Roskam, Jaxon Hallmark and Joe Acker in addition.
After the second inning, the closest the scoreboard showed was 4-2 in the midst of a fourth inning that featured a combined five runs, three errors, three bunts and two sac flies on just two total hits.
“It’s kind of tough when you have runners in scoring position (like that),” Waldron said. “You can’t miss up or miss any spots, that’s when it matters most. It’s nice to just rely on the defense.”
Nebraska would make it out of the inning with a three-run lead at 5-2, taking advantage of several Minnesota mishaps in the bottom frame.
From there, NU played the rest of the contest without a defensive mishap.
“We played relatively good defense outside of one particular play,” Erstad said. “We’ll go home and get ready for tomorrow and try to win a series.”
The Huskers will look to clinch the series against Minnesota on Sunday, a day on which Nebraska hasn’t lost since May of 2016.
NU lost just one conference series in last year’s Big Ten title run, and the Huskers know the league games mean even more in pursuit of their end goals.
“It’s kind of a wake up call, almost,” Waldron said. “It’s time to start getting going and we really don’t want to miss any opportunity that we have.”
Sunday’s first pitch from Husker senior Matt Warren is set for 2:05 p.m. at Haymarket Park.