Nebraska bats quieted in 5-2 regional-opening loss to Florida

STILLWATER, Oklahoma – Ashton Wilson was the hero of Florida’s NCAA Regional win over Nebraska on Friday afternoon.

The Gators have been snakebit by injuries in right field. Wilson, a sophomore from Orlando, drew the start and delivered when his team needed it most. With two outs in the third and runners on the corners against Nebraska ace Brett Sears, Wilson roped one of his three doubles on the afternoon down the right-field line to give Florida a 3-1 lead.

Then he crushed the first home run of his Florida career to extend the lead in the late innings.

Along with Wilson’s performance, Nebraska missed on several key opportunities at the plate in Friday’s 5-2 loss.

To keep their season alive, the Huskers must do something only three of the last 64 regional champions have done, win out of the loser’s bracket after dropping the opening game. It’s familiar territory after last week’s Big Ten Tournament run, but not somewhere Nebraska wants to be.

“We’ve been there before, we’ve seen it before,” Gabe Swansen said. “Keep being resilient. It’s happened a lot before this year so just continuing that and keep playing our brand of baseball.”

Here’s more on how Nebraska dropped their opener at the Stillwater Regional as the Gators handed Sears his first loss of the year (9-1).

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It didn’t take long for the Gators to start mashing. The third pitch of the game to be exact.

Sears went ahead 0-2 on leadoff man Cade Kurland in the first. Then the second baseman deposited a slider in left-center to give Florida an early 1-0 edge.

In his last six starts, Sears has allowed a run in the first inning. The 24-year-old said Kurland’s blast didn’t shake him.

“No, you’ve gotta pitch anyways,” Sears said. “It puts a run on the board, which isn’t great, but you’ve gotta get back to pitching.”

Nebraska escaped the inning via a 4-3 double play and answered with a two-out rally in the home half. Ben Columbus worked a walk to put two on for Gabe Swansen who plugged the gap in left-center to stay hot and tie the game 1-1.

Florida stayed on the barrel against Sears. The Gators first three leadoff hitters reached base and all of those at-bats resulted in an extra-base hit. Jac Caglianone started off the third with a double off the wall in center and came around to score on a two RBI Wilson double down the line in left.

“I definitely wasn’t limited,” Sears said. “I had my fastball working pretty good. Off-speed, I think I could have got some down in the zone a little more.”

Nebraska managed to limit the damage from then on. Sears stranded two runners in the second, fourth and fifth innings while reliever Drew Christo did the same in the sixth.

“I’m pretty sure almost every inning they had runners on so obviously there were a lot of chances to give up a lot of runs there,” Sears said. “I think just bearing down, making pitches and the defense making plays behind me was a big thing.”

Then, Swansen struck again. The junior hammered a 2-2 offering off the scoreboard in left for his fifth home run of the season. Swansen’s blast made it 3-2 and chased Gator starter Liam Peterson from the game after striking out seven Huskers in 5 1/3 innings of work.

Florida stymied the Huskers in the seventh and quickly countered in the eighth. A leadoff single and one out base hit to right from Kurland made it a 4-2 game.

Nebraska left the bases loaded in the eighth.

With one out, Swansen worked a walk to load the bases for Tyler Stone. The Husker designated hitter scorched a ball to center but it was caught for the second out. Dylan Carey followed with a three-pitch strikeout.

“I thought we had momentum going our way, it just didn’t turn out that way,” Swansen said. “(Stone) smoked a ball right at him. It’s just baseball really.”

Wilson put the final nail in the coffin and extended the Gators’ lead to 5-2 by launching a 1-2 pitch to deep left in the ninth. The loss dropped the Huskers to 39-21 on the year.

“Stories like Ashton, you need to have surprise stories at this time of the year to make a run,” Florida head coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “What a great story it is for Ashton. The day he had at the plate was just incredible.”

The Huskers produced far too little early in innings

It’s incredibly difficult to win a game when your leadoff batters go 0-for-9. Extend that to the first two batters of an inning, and Nebraska went 4-for-18 including a 1-for-10 stretch to start the game against Peterson.

“They cruised in the middle innings after we answered the first-inning run, but in the back half of the game we were on the barrel quite a bit,” Bolt said.

Unfortunately for the Huskers, they weren’t able to cash in on those late opportunities.

Nebraska couldn’t keep the ball rolling after Swansen’s sixth-inning blast and Carey’s subsequent single. Then of course, there’s stranding the bases loaded in the eighth.

It seemed Swansen had turned the tide yet again battling back from down 1-2 to work a walk. Then Stone lined out on a ball Bolt said was 108 mph off the bat. The skipper added the Huskers left a run on the board as well when Josh Caron failed to tag from third.

Ultimately, Nebraska’s bats made far too few plays against an extremely talented offense.

“In two of three phases of the game, it was really good,” Husker head coach Bolt said. “On the mound I thought we were really competitive and defensively we made some big, big plays to back up our pitchers in some tough spots. We didn’t set up a whole lot of innings. Didn’t get any leadoff hitters on base. Credit to Florida.”

What’s next for Nebraska?

The Huskers will return to O’Brate Stadium to face the loser of Oklahoma State and Niagara in an elimination game tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 p.m. CT. The game will be broadcast on ESPN+. The host Cowboys will face the Purple Eagles tonight at 6:00 p.m. CT.