Nebraska Baseball defeats Brigham Young

The Nebraska baseball team defeated the Brigham Young Cougars on Thursday afternoon, 6-3. Nebraska used a three run rally in the ninth to complete its comeback from a first inning deficit.

Nebraska fell behind early and trailed 3-0 at the end of the first inning. Sophomore Derek Burkamper gave up a two-run triple and five total hits in the inning. After the first inning, Burkamper settled down and pitched four more quality innings.

While Burkamper was putting up doughnuts on the scoreboard, the Husker offense went to work. Austin Christensen started the bottom of the third with a base hit. Jake Schleppenbach followed with a single, and both runners were going to be sacrificed by Christian Cox. However, BYU starting pitcher Kolton Mahoney went towards third, allowing Cox to beat the bunt. Austin Darby would ground into a 4-6-3 double play, but Christensen scored, cutting the BYU lead to 3-1.

The Huskers tied the game up the sixth, with Ryan Boldt beating a throw home on a Tanner Lubach fielder’s choice. Christensen then scorched a ball to right that would be a home run in most ballparks, but this ball was caught, but still scored Blake Headley from third.

With the game tied, both bullpens put up doughnuts until the ninth inning. The Huskers started their rally with two outs. Darby singled, followed by a Steven Reveles single. Both runners moved up on a passed ball, which set the stage for Boldt to drive in the go-ahead run. BYU chose to walk Boldt, and deal with Headley instead. Headley made the cougars pay with a go-ahead three-run double in the left field gap to put the Huskers up for good.

Josh Roeder came in to close the game down in the ninth. After retiring the first two batters, Roeder gave up two hits and was down in the count to the tying run. Roeder got a groundball on a full count pitch, and picked up his second save of the season. The Huskers moved to 2-2 with the win, while the Cougars fall to 0-5.