Horn's stellar outing lifts Nebraska baseball to Big Ten Championship victory over UCLA

For the second year in a row, the Huskers are Big Ten Champions. Nebraska baseball (32-27, 15-15) punched its ticket to the NCAA Tournament with a 5-0 shutout victory over No. 13 UCLA (42-16, 22-8) on Sunday.

The Huskers entered the week needing four straight wins to keep their season alive. They did just that in Omaha, with a pair of emphatic top-25 victories to boot. Nebraska will learn its regional destination on the NCAA selection show tomorrow at 11 p.m. CT.

“This one was particularly emotional for a lot of different reasons,” head coach Will Bolt said postgame. “[Greg Sharpe] is just one of them but also the fortitude that these guys have shown. Left for dead. Basically told that they were terrible a few times throughout the year.

“Told them to block out the noise and just keep going. One foot in front of the other. That’s life, you know. You get knocked down, you’ve got to get back up. You’ve got no other choice, and these guys just galvanized.”

In the biggest spot of his career, Ty Horn (5.89 ERA) turned in a performance for the ages. The right-hander shoved, throwing eight shutout innings against one of the nation’s best offenses. He gave up just three hits while striking out six in an 118-pitch outing.

“We started the season off 2-7 in the Big 10. It was pretty frustrating,” Horn said postgame. “We had a lot of team meetings without the coaches and just had to put our heads down and work. You see a lot of teams where there’s one or two or three glue guys on the team. I think this whole team is just a glue team.”

Dylan Carey and Rhett Stokes led the way at the plate with two hits and an RBI each. The Huskers only recorded one hit after the third inning, but a five-run advantage was more than enough thanks to Horn’s dominant day.

Here is a recap of the victory:

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Huskers handle UCLA pitchers early

After dismantling two of the Big Ten’s best pitchers earlier in the tournament, the Husker offense showed no signs of slowing down against UCLA starter Landon Stump (4.43 ERA).

In the top of the second, Nebraska batted around and scored three runs before the Bruins recorded an out. Stump hit Gabe Swansen with a pitch to spark a crooked frame.

Swansen advanced to second base on a wild pitch and Case Sanderson singled to put runners at the corners for Carey. He capitalized with a double that stayed fair down the right-field line and rolled into the corner. Swansen scored, and a passed ball on the next at-bat brought Sanderson home as well.

“Our guys were incredibly sold out to the game plan and whatever that was for that particular day,” Bolt said. “We got on some pitchers early because of that and that’s important because you want the pitchers to have to adjust to what you’re doing and not the other way around.”

Devin Nunez drew a full-count walk to put runners at the corners once again, and Stokes delivered. He smacked an RBI single through the right side to give the Huskers an early 3-0 advantage.

“We were relentless one through nine,” Bolt said. “There was no six home run barrage from one guy this year. It was just a total team effort.”

With one out, Riley Silva was hit by a pitch for the 19th time this season to load the bases, but Nebraska failed to extend the lead any further.

Freshman phenom strikes again

UCLA reliever Chris Grothues (4.81 ERA) didn’t fare much better than Stumps. He allowed the Huskers to quickly enlarge their lead in the third.

With two outs, Carey doubled to the right-field corner for the second time. Nunez — an All-Big Ten Freshman Team selection — followed with the biggest hit of his young career.

On the second pitch he saw, Nunez crushed a no-doubter into the right-field bleachers.

“Just seeing the ball fly off the bat and the stands going crazy, and the right-fielder just stopping, like he didn’t even try to go for the ball, it was pretty insane,” Nunez said postgame. “Words can’t even describe in that moment what I was feeling.”

The blast extended the Huskers’ advantage to 5-0, and following Stokes’ bunt single, UCLA was forced to dip into the bullpen again. Right-hander Wylan Moss took the mound after the Bruins’ first two arms lasted just 1.1 innings apiece.

Horn turns in outing for the ages

Ty Horn was nails from the jump, holding UCLA’s offense to three hits in eight scoreless innings. He emptied the tank, tossing 118 pitches and coming up with multiple massive punch outs.

“[Horn’s] competitive fire had him ready for this one,” Bolt said. “We had a pretty testy series with UCLA last time around and he was right in the middle of some of that. I kind of had a feeling that he was going to want to respond.”

Horn got the best of Roch Cholowsky — the Big Ten Player of the Year and Tournament MVP — in all four of his plate appearances, and held multiple superstar Bruins hitters off of the scorecard.

“He did a lot of growing up to get to this point,” Bolt said of Horn. “Those growing pains, playing those teams, he realized, ‘Okay, this is what I’ve got to do to to win when it matters.’ Make pitches and not shake off coach thinking, ‘I’ve got a better plan.'”

UCLA had two runners on base simultaneously for the first time in the fifth inning but a pair of flyouts ended the threat. Horn came up clutch in the sixth as well, stranding two Bruins in scoring position thanks to back-to-back massive swinging strikeouts.

He needed just nine pitches to get through the seventh frame and finished his day with another hitless inning in the eighth.

Casey Daiss relieved Horn in the ninth and clinched the championship victory with a looking strikeout. The crowd on hand exploded as the final pitch hit Hogan Helligso’s glove.

“Teams say they want to play in Nebraska, but you don’t want to play Nebraska in Charles Schwab with 15,000 people,” Horn said. “I think it speeds teams up. So, it was fun.”

Now, the Huskers shift their focus to an NCAA Regional next weekend.

“We’ve been playing our best for the last six weeks. I would rather have it that way than start hot and then fizzle at the end and limp to the finish line,” Bolt said. “We certainly didn’t do that last year either, but the way we’re playing right now, the guys [are] seeing how if we play together and play complimentary baseball we can beat anybody in the country.

“I mean anybody. We’ve proven it. We proved it at the beginning of the year and a totally different version of our team has proved it at the end of the year too.”

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