Pitchin' with Pritch: Wins for the Huskers

How about them Cornhuskers! The 2019 football season got off to what I would say was a less than impressive start, but still picked up a win. 

Opening up with a team that has only been in the FCS for seven years, and has never had a winning season since, and rated 125 or somewhere in that range out of 130 teams and then struggling with them wasn’t the way I thought the Huskers would handle the day. 

I realize the football players can read, and they know the history of the team they are playing, but I didn’t think either side of the ball played really well. The special teams and the defense certainly pulled the Huskers through the game. 

Offensively, the Huskers started pretty well, drove the ball down and scored in the first quarter. It looked like it would be easy sledding, but that was the end of the offense putting together much of anything for the rest of the day.

* There were spurts where they would have a good run or a nice pass and catch, but there were too many fumbles, too many interceptions and not near enough scoring. 

Take away the special teams touchdown and the defense scoring a couple, and there would have been lots of grumbling about, “how did we lose that game?” 

Coach Scott Frost didn’t make any excuses after the game and just said there were lots of areas where they needed to improve. He added he knew the team had the ability to do just that and they would get better. I hope he is correct.  

I think a couple of things were evident and one was that our quarterback just might not be mentioned in Heisman talk for a while and the offensive line has a lot of improvement necessary to compete in the Big 10. 

Next week will be a lot tougher as they go to Boulder and take on the Buffs.

Husker Volleyball

John Cook’s volleyball team picked up two wins over the weekend with a big win over Creighton on Friday night and then sweeping UCLA on Saturday night in Lincoln. 

Baylor then defeated Creighton on Saturday night to also go 2-0 in the four-team gathering. Baylor was rated No. 20 in pre-season, but they swept Creighton 3-0. 

I thought the Husker gals played much better against Creighton than they did against UCLA, but Coach Cook had a different take on the games, and I will defer to a guy who has won over 500 matches and only lost 70-some, he knows what he is talking about and I am just observing and drawing on my vast experience as a volleyball coach, which was one season, the year we started the volleyball program at Perkins County Schools.