Huskers Take Down No. 5 Beavers with Long Ball

Nebraska slugged three homers, and Will Walsh tossed six strong innings in the Huskers’ 7-3 win over No. 5 Oregon State in front of a season-high crowd of 6,348 on Friday night at Hawks Field at Haymarket Park.

With the win, the Huskers picked up their first top-five victory since upsetting No. 1 Arkansas in the Fayetteville Regional in 2021. The 7-3 victory over the fifth-ranked Beavers is Nebraska’s highest-ranked regular-season win since 2019, when the Huskers edged No. 3 Texas Tech, 2-1.

Nebraska (11-14) scored seven runs on 11 hits and an error, while Oregon State (19-5) totaled three runs, five hits and one error.

Dylan Carey led the Huskers at the plate, going 2-for-4 with a home run and two RBI. Devin Nunez added a 2-for-4 performance, while Tyler Stone and Cael Frost hit two-run homers in the win. Robby Bolin, Cayden Brumbaugh, Riley Silva, Hogan Helligso and Rhett Stokes tallied one hit each.

Will Walsh improved to 3-4 on the year, surrendering three runs, two earned, on five hits across six frames. Drew Christo picked up his first save, dealing three shutout innings with two punchouts and a pair of walks.

Walsh retired the Beavers in order in the first and third innings and worked around a pair of hits with no outs in the second frame to keep Oregon State off the board through the first three innings.

The NU offense plated the game’s first three runs behind back-to-back homers in the bottom of the third. Nunez reached on a one-out single through the left side, before Stone blasted a two-run homer to right field straight into the wind. Carey followed Stone with a first-pitch solo homer that sailed 363 feet into the left-field berm to give the Big Red its three-run lead.

The Huskers transitioned from the long ball to small ball in the bottom of the fourth to grow the lead to 4-0. A leadoff single from Silva and sacrifice bunt by Helligso had Silva on second with one out in the inning. Stokes laced a 1-0 pitch into the right-center gap to bring home Silva from second and extend the lead to four through four innings.

Walsh worked around a one-out walk in the top of the fifth, inducing a 5-4-3 double play to keep the fifth-ranked Beavers scoreless through five innings.

Nebraska expanded its lead to seven with three runs on four hits in the bottom of the fifth. Brumbaugh began the inning with a double down the left-field line on a 3-2 count, before Carey’s RBI single through the left side plated Brumbaugh and made it 5-0.

Frost followed Carey’s RBI single with a two-run homer into the left-field berm for NU’s third homer of the night to give the Huskers a 7-0 lead through five innings.

The Beavers scored their first two runs of the night with a two-run homer over the fence in left field in the top of the sixth to cut the NU lead to 7-2.

A pair of leadoff walks and a sacrifice bunt had runners on second and third with one out in the top of the seventh for the Beavers. An RBI groundout to second scored Oregon State’s third run of the night to make it a four-run game going into the final two innings.

Christo worked around a walk in the eighth and ninth frames to keep the Beavers off the board and preserve Nebraska’s 7-3 win over Oregon State.

Nebraska and Oregon State are scheduled to continue the series tomorrow afternoon at 2 p.m. at Hawks Field at Haymarket Park.