For the first time ever, the Washington Huskies have managed to win a Big Ten baseball conference series. It’s a bit of a weird stat, because it’s not like Washington hasn’t won a conference baseball series in the past, but this is the first time it’s ever happened in UW’s new conference.
And that feels like something to celebrate.
While on the road in Lincoln, Nebraska, Washington managed to claim its first-ever Big Ten series win as the Huskies took two of three games from the Cornhuskers in a dominant doubleheader showing on Saturday.
It’s worth noting that Washington is still below .500 on the season as a whole so far, but the Huskies are now sitting at 2-1 in Big Ten play. That puts UW in a five-way tie for third place in the most recent Big Ten baseball standings.
All things considered, that’s not a bad spot for the Washington Huskies to be in as they work to get established as a program with all that has changed from last season to this one. While Sunday’s loss is a little disappointing, UW baseball fans should be pretty proud of Eddie Smith and his Washington Husky baseball team for the way this series went.
Big Ten baseball series recap: Eddie Smith and the Washington Huskies baseball team upend Nebraska in Lincoln
Across the three-game series, Washington managed to outscore the Huskers by a total of 19 runs to 14 runs. Of course, winning the first two games of this series by a combined score of 17-8 will kinda put you in a great position to outscore an opponent across a three-game series.
Which, yeah, we can talk about how the Huskies only scored two runs in that last game, or we can talk about how the Huskies scored five runs in the first inning of the first game of this series. Which happens to be an excellent way to get a road series started, in my opinion.
In that game one win, Trevor Kole managed to go 4-for-5 at the plate as he hit a couple of doubles and four RBIs. On to that game two win and we’ll see how Malakhi Knight smacked a three-run home run in the top of the seventh inning to give the Huskies a lead (3-2) that UW was ultimately able to hold on to.
Washington really looked like a pretty well-rounded team throughout the weekend. The Huskies should probably figure out how to score a bit more regularly throughout a game, but hey, a series win (on the road) is a series win to celebrate. So let’s enjoy this a bit.
Right now, only the Oregon Ducks (3-0) and the Purdue Boilermakers (2-0) have better Big Ten records than UW. That could certainly change soon enough. And again, we can certainly celebrate the fact that Washington won a couple of noteworthy games.