After his team left seven men on base in last night’s 2-1 win, Creighton head coach Ed Servais wanted his team to come out more aggressive and apply a little more pressure on the Butler defense on Saturday afternoon.
For the most part, his players heeded his advice. Although the still left some runs on the field, they came up with some timely hits, especially during the fifth and sixth inning when they pushed a one-run lead out to a 6-1 advantage before holding off a late rally to win 6-4 and clinch the series win over the visiting Bulldogs.
“This team is finding a lot of different ways to win,” Servais said. “One day it will be 2-1, the next day it might be 6-4 like it was today, and another day it might be like it was against Stony Brook where they made some mistakes late in the game to give us an opportunity. It just proves to everybody that the team that makes the fewest mistakes — walking hitters, hitting hitters, committing errors — usually wins the game. That’s everything that we predicate this whole program on is to eliminate reasons for losing. I think today three walks, we didn’t hit anybody, and they didn’t steal a base on us. We only allowed four free bases, which is awesome. That’s great.”
Butler was in a giving mood most of the afternoon, and Creighton didn’t appear to have harbor any guilt over capitalizing on the mistakes. A throwing error in the first inning and misplay in the outfield in the second gave the Bluejays an early 2-0 cushion, matching their entire offensive output from Friday night’s win in just the first two innings.
“We put some pressure on them,” Servais said. “They helped us with the four errors, no doubt about it.”
The Bulldogs cut the deficit in half in the top of the fourth inning on an RBI double by senior catcher Chris Marras, but the game would soon get away from them an inning later. The top of the order came up for Creighton looking to further test that Butler defense, and they didn’t earn a passing grade when it was over. Junior center fielder Daniel Woodrow started things off with a drag bunt that died on the first base side of the grass. Butler starting pitcher Nick Morton fielded it cleanly, but his throw to first was late and the Bluejays were in business. Junior shortstop Nicky Lopez wore the very next pitch from Morton to put two aboard, then senior second baseman Ryan Fitzgerald loaded them up when he laid down a bunt that was bobbled by third baseman Garrett Christman to allow all runners to advance safely.
Senior first baseman Reagan Fowler cashed in a pair of those runs with a single through the right side of the infield, and senior third baseman Harrison Crawford capped off the big inning with a deep fly ball to center field that scored Fitzgerald to extend the lead to 5-1.
“I enjoy hitting in that situation,” Fowler said of his big fifth-inning. “He got me 0-2 right away, but I just kept battling and got a curveball and got it through the four-hole, which is big. Harrison followed it up with the big sac fly.”
Some clutch hitting by Creighton in the bottom of the sixth led to another run when Woodrow cashed in a lead-off single by left fielder Bryce Only. Woodrow came to the plate after a sac bunt and a line out left pinch-runner Will Bamesberger — who replaced Only after the base hit — in scoring position with two outs. He moved the final 180 feet when Woodrow lined an 0-1 offering from Morton into center field to make it 6-1.
“It’s always good to pile on the offense,” Woodrow said. “We wanted to be more aggressive. In the last couple days we’ve let a lot of ‘get-me-over’ breaking balls through, and we’ve taken first-pitch fastballs for strikes. We tried to be more aggressive with those today and put those in play instead of getting down 0-1 [in the count].”
Creighton played mistake-free baseball on defense, countering Butler’s four errors with none of their own. They weren’t as sharp as they normally are on the mound, however, especially from the string of strong outings from their weekend starting rotation. Junior left-hander Jeff Albrecht last four and 1/3 innings in which he allowed four hits, two walks, and earned run, but he was noticeably down a couple ticks on his velocity. In relief of Albrecht, senior right-hander Connor Miller conceded three runs on four hits over his three-plus innings on the bump before giving way to sophomore Ethan DeCaster and fellow senior Nick Highberger to finish off the game.
“[Jeff Albrecht] wasn’t quite as sharp today,” Servais said. “His velocity was down, and you could tell his arm was dragging a little bit. We were trying to milk him for every out we could get. We knew Connor probably needed another day’s rest, but we needed to run him out there, and we probably stuck with him a couple batters too long. We probably should have got another guy in there to start the eighth inning.”
The win improves Creighton to 24-7 overall on the season, and 4-1 through the first five games of conference play. Butler, on the other hand, fell to 9-25 overall and a mirror image of the Bluejays at 1-4 in league play.
Creighton will go for the series sweep tomorrow in what will be the finale of a string of 22 straight games in the state of Nebraska, a despite the fact that they’ve wrapped up an eighth consecutive series win, Creighton’s head coach wants Sunday afternoon’s performance to be even better that it was on Friday or Saturday.
“I’m looking for our best game of the weekend tomorrow,” Servais said. “I don’t think we’ve played it so far.”
The Bluejays are expected to throw sophomore right-hander Keith Rogalla (3-2, 4.73) against Butler lefty Jeff Schank (0-6, 3.53). First pitch is scheduled for 12:00 p.m. (CST).
