Despite four-run ninth, Huskers fall to ASU
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BY CURT McKEEVER / Lincoln Journal Star
OMAHA — This is the kind of game you dream for at the College World Series when you know the loser is going home.
Why else would Arizona State's Jeff Larish launch his third home run on a sticky Tuesday afternoon — a solo shot to straightaway center with the Sun Devils trailing 7-6 and down to their final out — and spoil Nebraska's dramatic and improbable four-run rally in the top of the ninth inning?
About that time, if you're a Husker, you think the baseball gods have just turned their backs on you.
Which is nothing, of course, compared to having your heart ripped out two innings later on a Texas Leaguer by a former Sun Devil bat boy.
"You'd rather a kid hit a jack ... (but) I don't know if there's any better way for us to lose than a duck fart over the second baseman's head, because that's what we battle for when we have two strikes," NU senior Curtis Ledbetter said of J.J. Sferra's one-out, 11th-inning single that gave Arizona State an 8-7 victory and ended the most successful season in Nebraska history.
Sferra — the son of an ASU assistant coach who picked up TPXs for the Sun Devils' 1998 national runner-up team — came to the plate lugging his own aluminum in the 11th after Joey Hooft singled to left off Brett Jensen and Seth Dhaenens, facing Tony Watson, moved Hooft to second with a sacrifice bunt.
After taking his first pitch from the left-handed freshman for a ball, the freshman, left-handed hitting Sferra got just enough of a slider to slap it in the air and send second baseman Jake Opitz on his horse into shallow center.
His horse wasn't fast enough.
"I was, ‘Just fall in my glove.' I tried everything I could," Opitz said.
Center fielder Daniel Bruce, who had saved the Huskers with a spectacular double play in the ninth, picked up the ball and wheeled it home. But not even the strongest-armed outfielder would have had a shot of nailing a galloping Hooft at the plate.
"There's not much to say, you know?" Opitz said. "There's not a guy out here who doesn't think we should still be playing.
"We score four runs in the top of the ninth, you don't expect them to come back. You've got to give them credit. They didn't fold."
Arizona State (41-24) advanced to face Florida at 1 p.m. today. The Sun Devils must win to force a Thursday contest between the two clubs. Otherwise, the Gators advance to the best-of-three championship series that starts Saturday. Nebraska, which tied Baylor for the Big 12 Conference regular-season championship and then won the league tournament, finished 57-15.
Thanks to a miscommunication on a two-out foul ball that dropped between the first baseman Ledbetter and second baseman Ryan Wehrle, ASU scored twice in the seventh to go ahead 5-3 — and took that advantage into the ninth looking to win for the 37th time in 41 games when leading at that point.
But Nebraska, 0-9 in games that it trailed entering the ninth, refused to comply with the Sun Devils' wishes.
After Jesse Boyer smashed a pitch from Pat Bresnehan for a single off the glove of the third baseman Dhaenens, Joe Simokaitis drew his fourth walk of the game. Arizona State coach Pat Murphy went to the mound and pleaded with all nine of his fielders to stay focused, but Alex Gordon, 1-for-9 in the CWS, hit a shot off the glove of shortstop Joe Persichina to pull NU to within 5-4, still with no outs.
With runners at first and second, Ledbetter was asked to sacrifice, but his bunt nearly turned into a double play after Simokaitis was thrown out at third.
That brought freshman Andy Gerch to the plate, who, after falling behind 0-2 in the count, yanked a high drive to left that just got over the fence for a three-run homer, just his fourth of the season.
"That comeback was definitely a special moment," Gordon said. "I think if we would've kept it, it would've been fun."
Instead, things only got wild for a Husker team that had been 30-0 when scoring at least seven runs, and for their partisan crowd anticipating another glorious day in Rosenblatt Stadium.
"We got our guys together and said ‘What does the crowd mean? It's nothing. It's sound. Can you have a good at-bat in sound?'" Murphy said.
That sound turned to groans when Dhaenens reached after Opitz mishandled his grounder. Dhaenens then stole second before Sferra reached on a bunt single to put runners at the corners.
Persichina, who had entered in the fifth when starting shortstop Andrew Romine was hit by a pitch in the face, followed by lifting a fly ball into shallow center. Sferra, thinking it would fall, was on the move, but Bruce made a sprawling catch and then fired to first to double up Sferra, leaving Persichina with a sacrifice fly and the bases empty.
They remained that way after the senior first baseman Larish, a fifth-round draft pick by Detroit, stroked the next delivery from Jensen over the 408-foot sign to make him just the third player to homer three times in a CWS contest.
Nebraska would escape without further damage, but only after backup catcher Mark Hightower made a diving save to keep an errant throw by Opitz from going into the NU dugout after Travis Buck had hit a grounder. On the play, Buck had rounded the bag and headed to second, but was gunned down by Hightower and Simokaitis trying to make it back to first.
The save, though, ended up being temporary, as the Huskers were left with their ninth one-run loss this year and fourth in six games at the CWS.
"There was a lot of emotion that whole game. It's too bad it ends like that," Opitz said. "It's heartbreaking."
Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.
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