No. 23 Maryland baseball (31-15, 11-4 Big Ten) will take on Nebraska (24-17-1, 9-6 Big Ten) in a weekend series in College Park starting on Friday.
The Terps return home as winners of eight straight, most recently sweeping Indiana in a road series last weekend and defeating Delaware on Wednesday. They claimed sole possession of first place in the Big Ten with the strong showing against the Hoosiers, but with three conference series still ahead, can still fall back down the standings if they are not sharp.
The Cornhuskers enter the weekend tied for third in the conference standings with a 9-6 record. They took two out of three games against Minnesota last weekend before losing to North Dakota State, 6-5, on Wednesday.
Maryland returned to the D1Baseball top 25 for the first time since early March, when it dropped out following a rough 4-7 start. The Terps were ranked No. 13 in the preseason but fell out completely after losing all three games at the Cambria College Classic against then-No. 4 Ole Miss, then-No. 7 Vanderbilt and Hawaii. They find themselves at No. 23 in the latest iteration and have gone 27-8 since falling out of the rankings, completely turning their season around.
But coach Rob Vaughn and his club still won’t let the rankings change their typical approach.
“We have a good week … and all of a sudden D1Baseball loves us and all these people love us,” Vaughn said. “Which is great, but I’m telling you you’re a bad weekend away from those guys sending you right back to the gutter.”
Nebraska, while outside of the top-100 nationally in RPI, possesses one of the better pitching staffs in the conference with a collective 4.50 ERA, behind only Iowa. While the Cornhuskers rank in the middle of the pack in strikeouts, they don’t allow a lot of balls to be put in play, ranking second in the Big Ten in fewest hits allowed.
The two-headed monsters of the Cornhusker rotation are juniors Jace Kaminska and Emmett Olson. Both have started at least ten games this season, winning six and five games on the mound, respectively.
Nebraska ranks in the top five in nearly every offensive category in the conference, including trailing only Maryland in home runs with 76. The Cornhuskers have scored 330 runs on the season and hold a collective .304 batting average.
“I understand the mentality those guys are going to bring in here,” Vaughn said. “So you can throw their record out the window. They have talented players and a really tough mentality, and I can tell you they’re going to be fighting for their lives just like we are.”
Vaughn went to a different pitching rotation last weekend with junior right-hander Jason Savacool getting pushed back to Sunday for extra rest. Senior right-hander Nick Dean and freshman left-hander Kyle McCoy were pushed up to Friday and Saturday, respectively, as a result, with both turning in seven-innings gems. Vaughn said he plans to use the same rotation going forward, citing continuity and not switching things up if it’s working.
One added bonus of Dean and McCoy going seven innings each was that the bullpen was well-rested for the Sunday series finale.
Vaughn mentioned earlier in the season that one of the reasons for the bullpen’s struggles was the starters not going deep enough into games, over-taxing the relief arms. But this past weekend, instead of asking his relievers to pitch multiple innings on a Friday, they were available to throw one-to-two shutdown innings later in the weekend.
“That’s just asking those guys to do a little bit too much,” Vaughn said. “When you [get depth from your starters], it allows you to match up with stuff…if we can start getting some length out of them the way we got [last] weekend for the next three or four weeks, it could be a fun ride.”
