Synonyms to befuddled include: perplexed, bewildered, dazed, muddled. Whatever preference one may have, each is sufficient in describing Ohio State's 2014 showings against Nebraska. Four trips to Nebraska, three games in Lincoln and one in Omaha, saw Ohio State drop each contest in the Cornhusker's final at-bat including three walk-offs.
Back-to-back late leads blown, ok, deja vu works too. To leave Lincoln 0-3 with each game won in Nebraska's final trip to the plate? Gut-wrenching is apt. To find yourself again victim to a walk-off loss in the Big Ten Tournament? Words begin to be tough to grasp, one is befuddled, left in a daze trying to make sense of what occurred.
In taking in all four games between Ohio State and Nebraska, the beauty of sports was witnessed. The Cornhuskers receive tremendous support from the community, the games played at Hawks Field at Haymarket Park in Lincoln is truly a spectacle to observe. The three-game series drew a total attendance of 9,249, a near 10,000-strong turnout of red-clad fans cheering on native son Darin Erstad's club.
"They do baseball really good out there," Ohio State head coach Greg Beals said. "The university and city went in together to build the stadium, they love baseball. College baseball is alive in that area."
Each contest presented college baseball played at a high level, clean baseball, nip-and-tuck affairs between two clubs who have been accustomed to playing each other with a lot on the line. Ohio State ended Nebraska's season in the 2012 Big Ten Tournament, the Cornhuskers returned the favor a year later.
For seven innings each game Ohio State did enough to win each contest, pick up a win over an eventual 40-win club that appeared in the NCAA Tournament. The Buckeyes saw masterful performances from starting pitchers Greg Greve, Tanner Tully and Jacob Post, the trio combining to pitch 22 innings, conceded three runs, two earned.
Unfortunately, in the end it wasn't enough. Hawks Field turned into a house of horrors for the Buckeyes.
In the series opener, Nebraska scored two unearned runs in the bottom of the eighth to win 3-2. After Tully pitched 6.1 innings of no-hit baseball, the Buckeye bullpen squandered the freshman's sterling start, conceding three runs in the bottom of the ninth in a 4-3 loss. In the weekend finale, a 1-1 game four the final 4.5 innings turned into another Nebraska triumph, a first-pitch fastball off the bat of junior catcher Tanner Lubach giving the Huskers a second consecutive ninth-inning celebration.
Freshman center fielder Troy Montgomery was left in a deep crouch, unable to corral the single up the middle for a play at the plate, which would have taken a miraculous effort to keep the game knotted, and stave off defeat. Sophomore second baseman Troy Kuhn laid sprawl behind second base, the ball skidding beyond his reach in an effort to get a game-saving stab. The rest of the Buckeyes walked off the diamond with heads bowed, nothing to be ashamed of, but certainly trying to grasp what the hell just happened, again?!
If only that was the end.
With their season coming down to the win-and-advance Big Ten Tournament, the Buckeyes needed to claim the conference's automatic bid by way of the title to make the NCAA Tournament. Seeking their first NCAA Tournament appearance in five seasons, the Buckeyes limped to a 30-26 regular season, a lost season after entering the series against Nebraska at 18-10. The Buckeyes encountered tragedy when freshman left-hander Zach Farmer was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia; only those inside the Ohio State clubhouse can speak to the toll that took on the team, but the team wasn't the same after that weekend in Lincoln.
Nonetheless, the Big Ten Tournament offered a new season. Get hot, win four games and the Buckeyes are dancing, in the field of 64.
With the Big Ten Tournament held in Omaha, games played in TD Ameritrade Park, a return to Nebraska surely wouldn't see the Buckeyes past come back to haunt them. The home of the College World Series 60 miles east of Hawks Field in Lincoln provided a venue where the Buckeyes had no prior history. Greg Beals club wasn't dressing in the same locker room presented in Hawks Field, they weren't playing out of the first base dugout where the players and staff thrice suffered agony.
A new stage and a new opportunity.
Unfortunately same result.
After three scoreless innings Ohio State jumped on Nebraska starter Chance Sinclair. After pitching a complete game in the regular season's Saturday contest, the three runs Ohio State scored all unearned, Sinclair conceded five runs off three hits, a hit batter and two wild pitchers as Ohio State plated six runs in the top of the fourth inning, chasing the first-team All-Big Ten pitcher after 10 outs. With a crowd of around 5,000 in attendance, Ohio State all but erased the home field advantage Nebraska encountered, quieting the stadium to a hush.
Nebraska halved the deficit in the bottom of the fifth inning, but it appeared the Buckeyes finally had Nebraska's number, and would be in the winner's bracket of the conference tournament, to survive and advance.
History should have taught us better.
Again Ohio State closer Trace Dempsey, Nebraska opened the bottom of the ninth with a full count walk, a hit batter, and four-pitch walk. The tying run at the plate, a feeling of inevitability set in. Dempsey struck out outfielder Christian Cox on a called third strike to put the Buckeyes within two outs. Senior outfielder Michael Pritchard, who scored the game-winning run in the regular season series opener, drove in the winning run in the middle match, walked on four pitchers. A batter later, junior second baseman Pat Kelly, tied the game six runs to a side with a single up the middle. Pritchard would beat a throw home on a sacrifice fly to center off the bat of Lubach, and just like that it was over. Another Nebraska win.
In the postgame interviews senior catcher Aaron Gretz and Tully both sat glass-eyed. Tully short and succinct in answers to the media after watching another quality start fall by the wayside against Nebraska, Gretz hand to chin answered question methodically, trying to make sense of what happened.
The following morning the Buckeyes would lose yet another one-run game, this time to Illinois, to exit the Big Ten Tournament, end the 2014 season at 30-28 and close the chapter on a nightmare.
The Big Ten operated on a two-year cycle in scheduling Big Ten series. The 2013 season closed a cycle, giving the Buckeyes and Cornhuskers a true home-and-home rivalry. With the 2014 season beginning a new cycle, the Buckeyes had the unfortunate luck of drawing back-to-back years taking to the road to play in Lincoln. Due to Maryland and Rutgers joining the Big Ten, the two-year cycle wasn't played out and a new scheduling cycle was randomized with Ohio State finding itself, yet again, facing a road series against Nebraska.
As Ohio State appears en route to its best season under Beals, the team eyes an at-large berth into the NCAA Tournament. With five weekends to go the Buckeyes are on track, entering the weekend with an RPI of 29 in the NCAA's latest ratings release and are squarely in position to receive a bid to play in a regional.
But as the 24-9 Buckeyes eye a road to Omaha, the games played down the road in Lincoln will tell whether or not the team is ready for such a pursuit. And to player and staff alike, they're ready for the opportunity.
"I remember it like it's yesterday," junior infielder Nick Sergakis said of the heartache in Lincoln. "I can't even describe to you the feeling I was feeling losing to them on three last at-bats in the regular season, then in the tournament, that was heartbreaking."
Sergakis able to speak at length as to Ohio State's attitude heading to Nebraska, Beals didn't think many words were necessary.
"Every guy in the locker room knows exactly what happened last year," the fifth-year head coach said. "We'll be ready to go."
Just how ready to go are the Buckeyes? While respecting the opponent, alluding to Nebraska being a good team and knowing they'll be ready to take on the Bucks, Sergakis didn't hide his emotions.
"Me personally, and I know everyone in the locker room feels the exact same way, we want this series more than any of them. We don't want to take two of three, we want to sweep them, we want all of them. I just want these guys so bad."
What once was pain is now fuel to the fire. What once was hell, Hawks Field may now be the place where the Buckeyes emerge as a true threat on there way to wiping away memories from a place of equal despair, Omaha.