Up Next - Kansas State And Mike Anderson on Faith in this Husker team

by Jon Johnston on May 24, 2007 2:19 PM CDT in Baseball Comment 5 comments

The Huskers get Kansas State tonight at 7:30 pm. There's a love affair going on between Bricktown Ballpark and the Nebraska Cornhuskers. As of the Texas A&M win, the Huskers are 28-8 all-time at the Big 12 tournament and 24-5 at Bricktown. That's pretty darned impressive, eh?

The Huskers will be starting Johnny Dorn on the mound, no doubt saving red hot Luke Wertz for the Texas Longhorns. Kansas State lost yesterday, 19-10, to Texas, giving up 10 runs and going through four pitchers in the third inning. The Wildcats have now lost four in a row and barring a miracle won't make the NCAA post-season, so it's questionable how much fire they have left to face the Huskers.

I liked this quote from Mike Anderson after the Texas A&M win:

On Faith in Team:
There is not a guy on this team that I don’t have faith in. The second I lose that, they lose it too. It doesn’t always work, but there is not a guy on this team I don’t have faith in. We have 27 guys down here and if we hit them, pitch them or put them in on defense and there is any doubt that their coach doesn’t have confidence in them, then I have made a huge mistake. So there are 27 guys that if they had a bad outing before or a good outing before, they know that they are getting put into a game with a coach that has confidence in them.

No doubt there are some of you who see this season as a disappointing year for Nebraska. I'd ask you to take a different perspective. You have a relatively young coach in charge of a program that's had a ton of distractions this season and he has kept them together and got them back above .500 by the end of regular season play. If Mike Anderson wasn't the guy who's supposed to be in charge of this program - there's no way that happens.

The Aggies didn't start their ace pitcher Kyle Nicholson against Nebraska, no doubt saving him for the game against Texas today. Nicholson is an excellent pitcher

The Aggies were swept by Texas in their last conference series of the year last weekend, so the loss against Nebraska was their fourth in a row. That's the longest losing streak this season for the Aggies, previously they'd only lost two in a row.

You can look at the A&M losing streak in two ways:

They want to prove they're better than that and will want to do anything they can to beat Texas today. Losing four in a row to Texas is unacceptable (hence why they've saved Nicholson for Texas).
They're in a slump, and it wouldn't matter who was pitching or batting, Texas owns them.

I'm going for the former. Texas has an incredible team this year, but there is a lot of Aggie pride on the line here. I say Kyle Nicholson shuts them down long enough for the Aggies to get their offense going.

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