Huskers shut out Wichita State
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BY CURT McKEEVER / Lincoln Journal Star
Nebraska discovered a new way to feature the Erik Bird-Zach Herr show Tuesday night against fifth-ranked Wichita State.
By accident.
The plan Husker pitching coach Eric Newman had for the Shockers was to hopefully get three innings out of Bird, then use four or five others out of the bullpen.
Instead, Bird blanked Wichita State for 62/3 innings, then watched fellow junior Herr finish off Nebraska’s 3-0 victory in front of 5,204 fans at Haymarket Park.
Bird was coming off a dismal performance at Oklahoma State on Saturday, where he gave up seven hits and seven runs in just two-thirds of an inning.
Tuesday’s game was the 32nd time in their careers that Bird and Herr had pitched in the same game, but was the first when Herr saved a game for his fellow Omahan.
“To do what he did tonight after everything this weekend was incredible,” Herr said of Bird. “It was just fun. I even got a fist pound from him. Coach usually lets him go off the mound before (making a change), but he stayed on there. It felt kind of like old days.”
It was the first time since the opening game of its NCAA Super Regional against UC Irvine last season that Wichita State had been shut out. The Shockers’ previous low production this year was a 3-2 loss to Long Beach State on Feb. 29.
“Obviously, Bird pitched a lot better than he did at Stillwater, or Oklahoma State was a whale of a lot better team than I ever saw,” said Wichita State coach Gene Stephenson, who admonished his team for being lackadaisical.
“It was a great atmosphere for baseball. Wonderful crowd. Awesome. Love it, and how our guys cannot get charged up and play in this atmosphere I cannot tell you. I wanted to play. That’s how much it meant to be on this field playing these guys. It was fun. But not us, we just seemed to be, ‘Can’t wait to get on the bus to get home.’”
Actually, Wichita State (27-6) took its best cuts at Bird (2-1, but 2-0 in his four starts with a 1.37 ERA) in the first two innings.
Left fielder Nick Sullivan kept Bird from getting in trouble in the first inning. With one out and a runner on first, he straddled the foul line and leaned against the wall to catch a fly ball hit by Conor Gillaspie.
In the second inning, Bird got a visit from Newman, who’d already given him some advice while the Huskers were scoring two first-inning runs.
“I told him, ‘Hey, you’re living on the edge right now,’” Newman said. “Erik’s a guy with a sinker, and ... I said, ‘Whatever you need to do, whether it’s back off a little bit or just stay smooth, you’re overpowering your sinker right now, so it’s not doing anything.’
“They (the Shockers) took some pretty good swings. And then, from the third inning on, that ball was really barreling down, because, all of a sudden, the fly balls became ground balls.”
Bird scattered three hits before leaving after striking out Bret Bascue with a runner on second in the seventh. He then watched Herr overcome walking pinch hitter Clinton McKeever by retiring Mitch Caster on a slow chopper to shortstop that was a bang-bang play at first.
Herr also worked around hitting Andy Dirks with a pitch to start the eighth, getting Kenny Williams Jr., to hit into a double play. He then caught Gillaspie, a Millard North graduate, looking at a third strike. And in the ninth, after giving up a two-out double to Dusty Coleman, he fanned Bascue.
“Those guys back-to-back the way they were, boy, we used to do that a lot,” NU coach Mike Anderson said after his ninth-ranked Huskers improved to 26-6-1. “It sure was nice to be able to double them up like that.”
Nebraska got all the offense it would need in the first, stringing together four straight one-out singles off Tim Kelley to take a 2-0 lead.
The Huskers got another run in the eighth when Jake Mort was hit by a pitch with two outs, stole second, then scored when a grounder hit by Jake Opitz glanced off the glove of second baseman Taylor Brown for an error.
“I would like to think it builds confidence,” Anderson said of the win three days before NU begins a three-game home series against Kansas. “That’s a good ballclub.”
Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.
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