10-8 was the final if you were curious for some morbid reason and/or became confused at any point. The team competed pretty well by and large, I doubt anyone foresaw Niederklein struggling like that? Anyway, riding the emotional roller coaster may not be all bad for the team, but there is clearly still a lot of work ahead of them if they want to have a shot at the conference, even a poopy conference like the Big 10.
That is all I am after this year, a chance at the Big 10 championship, still think the pitching will be better farther down the road.
Erstad needs time to mold the team.Definitely. There's clearly going to be a lot of situational evaluation going on right now. Even though it was frustrating to listen to Niederklein get hammered pitch after pitch for so long, it's pretty obvious they wanted to see if he could respond and dig himself out, which didn't happen last night. No way they would let him go that long in May with a conference game/championship on the line.
I think the offense is pretty decent so far and Bolt's done a good job managing the game from the third base box and although they would've/could've/should've taken advantage of those 7 errors a little more, 8 runs should still be sufficient to win you a game. The questionable call on Kalkowski's apparently-fair rip down the line and a great defensive play to rob NU of extra bases in the 9th were also big difference makers, since at least 1 run would have scored in each of those instances. As Erstad said Friday night, that's baseball. It'd be nice to get some of those breaks today.
