Huskers watch their lead slip and lose the series against Rutgers

The Nebraska baseball team (20-9) fell in game two of the three-game series against Rutgers (16-13) 6-5. The Huskers held a 5-0 lead, but the Scarlet Knights slowly chipped away and won the game.

Once again, NU got out to an early lead in this game. In the first inning, Joe Acker hit a solo home run to lead off. In the next inning, Luke Roskam doubled the lead with a moon shot over the left field wall. An error, hit batter and a walk loaded the bases for the Big Red and Jaxon Hallmark hit a single to center that scored one, but the second runner coming home was thrown out.

With a 3-0 lead, Nebraska went into the fourth inning and added two more. A double from Joe Acker and a home run to left center from Spencer Schwellenbach made the lead 5-0 and the Huskers were taking control.

That control slowly started to slip, however. Chance Hroch started on the mound and he pitched four straight shutout innings to start the game. In those four innings, the senior gave up just one hit and struck out three. In the fifth inning, a base hit followed by a double scored one for RU, but Hroch limited the damage to just the one run.

After the righty pitched one more inning, Braxton Bragg took over the mound in the seventh inning. Bragg walked his leadoff batter then, after forcing an out, Rutgers hit back-to-back home runs off him and the score was 5-4. Spencer Schwellenbach took the mound after the home runs and he got out of the seventh inning with no further harm. The junior gave up one run in the eighth and one in the ninth while the offense went cold, and that was enough for the Scarlet Knights to take the win.

The NU bullpen struggled once again to keep Rutgers off the board. After Chance Hroch went six innings deep with just one run allowed on five hit, the relievers saw the lead slip. Braxton Bragg struggled right away when he came in, and in just one-third of an inning, the sophomore allowed three runs on two hits. At that point, the Big Red still held the lead and Spencer Schwellenbach took the mound with two and two-thirds innings remaining in the game. The junior allowed two runs on five hits and was given the loss. The Nebraska bullpen fell apart in both games this weekend, so they will look to fix that to try and salvage one game in this series.

Although there were problems out of the bullpen, the offense certainly didn’t make it easy on them. After starting the game with five runs in four innings, the Huskers were unable to put the game to bed on offense. Once again, NU struggled to get runners in scoring position home, and they were 2-13 on the day. The big hits from Acker, Roskam and Schwellenbach scored four of the five runs, and only one of them had a runner in scoring position. In order to find success going forward, the bats will not be able to rely on big hits to score all of their runs, instead rallying to bring in runners in scoring position.

The Big Red will try and avoid being swept on Sunday against Rutgers at noon. Following the final game of this series, Nebraska will head to Piscataway, New Jersey to play four games, two against each Indiana and Rutgers.

All games can be streamed on BTN+ and heard on Husker Sports Network.