The first game of the intrastate rivalry commences!

It is absurd how many baseball polls there are, isn’t it…. We will try and stick with D1Baseball.com’s rankings on our articles, since it seems to be the most accepted today, and it’s just easier to stick to one. But we will try and keep you up to date on the others on occasion. Anyway, ON TO THE Creighton JERKS!!!

#24 Nebraska Cornhuskers (20-5) at Creighton Bluejays (20-4)

Location: Charles Schwab Field, Omaha, NE

Date/Time: Tuesday, April 2nd @ 6pm CDT

Head Coaches: Will Bolt (5th season, 117-80-1) & Ed Servais (21st season, 663-391)

TV/Stream: FlowBaseball.tv($)

Radio: Huskers Radio Network, Huskers.com, Huskers App

Probable Pitchers: LHP Will Walsh (3-0, 4.28 ERA) vs. RHP Malakai Vetock (2-0, 5.40 ERA)

Scouting Report

Creighton is riding a pretty good streak offensively. They are using the Nicholl’s model of beating up on some weak teams, with the 163rd ranked strength of schedule. They scheduled a Series with Stanford when it was a good team, but the Cardinal now stand 11-13 on the season. Shortstop Nolan Clifford returned last weekend after 3 weeks off due to injury. He went 7-13 on the weekend and that actually dropped his batting average to .532. OF Nolan Sailors is batting .375, and leads a team that likes to run in steals with 11.

On the mound the Jays have a team ERA of 4.40. The weekend starters bring that down quite a bit, but Servais is not afraid to use them on their bullpen days, so don’t be surprised if you see ace Dominic Cancellieri. CU is throwing Malakai Vetock at the Huskers. The junior has come in for a relief appearance against Nebraska and threw 3 shutout innings last year against the Huskers in Creighton’s 6-5 walk off win in game 1. This will be his first ever start, and he has only pitched 3+ innings twice in his career, so expect the normal 7 or more pitchers out of CU.

Series History

Nebraska leads the all time series 86-59-2. Creighton won the series in 2023, 2 games to 1. Remember when Brett Sears was an absolute liability in game 1? Seems like Bizzaro World now. Then Creighton walked off the field in Lincoln just as Nebraska loaded the bases with no outs in a tie game. They then won the completion in Omaha, which may have benefited NU in the long run. Kyle Perry was very passionate leading a players only meeting between games that led to a win in the final game of the series and sent NU on a good stretch run to end the season.