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Nebraska baseball eliminated from Big Ten Tournament after 8-0 loss to Oregon

by: Bobby Schneider05/24/26bschneider33

OMAHA — No. 2 seed Nebraska baseball (42-15) was eliminated from the Big Ten Tournament after its 8-0 loss against No. 3 Oregon (40-15) in front of 12,038 fans on Saturday night at Charles Schwab Field.

The defending back-to-back conference tournament champions significantly struggled at the plate. In fact, the Huskers did not smack a hit until the fifth inning with just four on the night.

Starter Gavin Blachowicz (L, 3.93 ERA) gave the Big Red offense a shot. Sure, he surrendered two, two-out solo homers with three total runs allowed. However, he escaped a bases-loaded jam in the third and struck out nine Ducks in his five innings off 83 pitches (53 strikes) with just one walk issued.

Cooper Katskee worked 1 2/3 IP without a run surrendered until it turned into a two-out four-run Duck rally in the seventh.

A near 6-4-3 double play would have gotten the Huskers out of that inning untouched, but Rhett Stokes made an errant throw to first, which sucked any sort of Husker life out of the Sea of Red in Omaha.

Here is an instant recap from the semifinal…

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Sanford stuffs Big Red attack

Oregon’s Will Sanford put on a strikeout clinic with nine total to cool off the Big Red barrels in six innings. In fact, Sanford struck out four consecutive Huskers from the first through the second and didn’t yield a baserunner until the fourth inning.

Jeter Worthley became the first NU baserunner in the fourth, and Dylan Carey joined him for back-to-back walks drawn. However, a flyout and Sandford’s eighth strikeout squandered any Big Red momentum brewing.

The Duck righty carried two strikeouts apiece in each of the first four frames. It took until Jett Buck’s single in the fifth to break up Sanford’s no-hit bid.

The Huskers finished with just two hits off the stellar Duck starter — the other coming from Worthley’s lead-off double in the sixth that NU could not cash in.

While he shut down Nebraska’s bats, it is not much of a shock since he recorded 12 Ks against NU in the regular season.

The Big Red’s bats remained on life support as UO hit the bullpen, just notching two more hits.

Blachowicz does enough against the mighty Duck lineup

It was either an Oregon swing-and-miss or crushed contact in Gavin Blachowicz’s five innings pitched.

Recent struggles plagued his last three starts, which consisted of 12 runs surrendered over just 13 1/3 IP. And it appeared his chronic issues would remain after his second pitch of the game was crushed to left-center for a double that would eventually score a Duck run.

Not to mention, Naulivou Lauaki’s 118-mph single of the left-field wall may have made a few Husker fans cringe.

However, Blachowicz recovered to combat the Oregon batters that went yard six times in its quarterfinal win over Washington. The 6-foot-4 Nebraska starter was cruising after the lone first-inning run when he struck out the side in the second.

Significant crooked-inning sirins alarmed in the third after two singles and an issued walk to load the bases. Despite the Duck-filled pond traffic, Blachowicz forced a 4-3 double play to escape unscathed.

But Maddox Molony and Angel Laya took advantage of Blachowicz leaving his heater high in the fourth and fifth with no-doubt solo blasts as NU sat in a 3-0 hole. Each of which came with two outs.

Was it superb? No, but a performance like that is well enough to feel comfortable in starting a regional.

Nebraska now awaits its regional destination, projected to be one of the 16 hosts in the NCAA Tournament.

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