STILLATER — A sloppy game prevented the clean sweep for Oklahoma State on Sunday. After winning the three-game series against Nebraska with a Saturday blowout the Cowboys were significantly less sharp in Sunday's finale and lost 14-5 to the Huskers.
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"I hate the day after a blowout,” OSU coach Frank Anderson said. "Especially if it's the last day and you've already won the series. There's always a situation where you worry about how you're going to react emotionally.
"If you count all the things that happened, we gave them about 16 unforced runners and we were very fortunate to have it end up the way it was.”
OSU went through five pitchers, who combined for nine walks. Cowboy pitchers hit three Nebraska players with pitches, and OSU committed two fielding errors.
"It was sloppy,” said reliever Robbie Weinhardt, who threw 2 1/3 innings, giving up five hits. "As pitchers we didn't get the job done. We were walking people. We let our outfield kind of daze off. Friday and Saturday Andy (Oliver) and Tyler (Lyons) did a great job of great tempo and getting outs and keeping the ball in play, keeping them active.”
OSU beat Nebraska 1-0 in the series opener on Friday, with Oliver pitching the complete game. Then on Saturday the Cowboys outscored the football team in its Spring Game, beating the Huskers 19-2 with Lyons on the mound all nine innings.
But Anderson wasn't willing to place all the blame on the pitching staff. In Saturday's big win every OSU player in the lineup got at least two hits. On Sunday, in front of a home crowd of 1,242, only left fielder Neil Medchill got more than one hit.
"When things go sideways a little bit, you're going to have to score a lot of runs,” Anderson said. "We lost it as a group. It wasn't the pitching staff; it wasn't a defense deal. If you give up runs, you need to match run for run, and we didn't do that, either.”
Nebraska had a big third inning, capitalizing on two OSU fielding errors and five walks to score four runs. OSU pulled to within three in the fifth as Rebel Ridling scored Dean Green on a sacrifice fly and Nebraska walked in two OSU runs. But the game slipped out of reach again when Nebraska notched three runs in the sixth.
OSU (23-10, 8-7 Big 12) is now in a three-way tie for fourth place in the Big 12. Texas A&M sits on top of the league with a 12-3 conference record, followed by Nebraska and Missouri. OSU, Texas and Baylor are all 8-7 in league play after this weekend's games.
The Cowboys have a midweek game at Texas-Arlington then head to Austin.
"We just wanna play clean,” Anderson said. "Today we didn't play very clean. We just need to go down there (to Austin) and play like we have for most of the year, play with some composure, and if we do that I'll be happy with how we go down there and handle it.”
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