Nebraska baseball entered Saturday needing to win for a chance to make the Big Ten Conference Tournament. But as Linkin Park said, “in the end it doesn’t even matter”.
Despite the victory, weather in West Lafayette was enough for Purdue and Maryland to cancel the final game of their series, putting the Boilermakers into the final spot of the conference tournament.
The Saturday forecast was well known ahead of today. Throughout the season, when weather had the possibility of impacting a series, games were either moved up or moved back. Nebraska sat through more than four hours of rain delays last weekend just to finish a single inning.
But the Big Ten Conference does not care about baseball. That’s blatantly obvious with their BTN+ product at several schools. It was made obvious again as the league office did not step in to make sure the Boilermakers moved their regular-season finale to be part of a Friday double-header.
Still, Nebraska entered the final series with a chance to control their own destiny. The Huskers came out flat on Thursday and fell 4-1. NU then won 6-3 Friday and held on for a 10-9 Saturday victory.
Would a Thursday victory have put pressure on Purdue to play out their series? Most likely, but the Huskers also had opportunities ahead of the final series that would have kept them from depending on other teams to stay on a level and fair playing field or respect the game enough to not have to cancel a game in order to secure a spot in the league tournament.
Nebraska closes the season 23-30 overall. In the Big Ten, Big Red went 10-14 to finish ninth, one spot behind 9-12 Purdue due to winning percentage.