2014 Ed Servais (Spomer / WBR)
The date was May 25th, 2014. Creighton had just come off of back-to-back wins in the BIG EAST tournament as the number one seed, downing Xavier 9-2 and Seton Hall 2-1. In a double elimination set up, the Jays were forced to play the Musketeers a second time for the championship – the tournament was set up for a winner-take-all final game instead of opting for a more sensible approach that the team from the loser’s bracket needed to win twice to take home a trophy and a regional bid.
Creighton was 14-4 in conference and ran roughshod over their competition, failing to lose a single conference series. Xavier went 8-10 in conference, getting swept by St. John’s and Seton Hall while losing 2-0f-3 to Butler.
Xavier walloped the Bluejays behind a complete game shutout from Trent Astle, securing the win with two runs in the third, a run in the fourth, and two in the fifth. They’d go on to win a ballgame over Clemson after getting shelled 11-0 by eventual national champion Vanderbilt, and then get ousted completely by a decent Oregon team in extra innings.
The Bluejays stayed home that June, twiddling their thumbs and signing various professional contracts.
It was in these moments that the budding rivalry between Xavier and Creighton was first planted in the fetid soil of BIG EAST Baseball lore, an already rancid wasteland of ineptitude and cozy chaos that left onlookers perturbed by what they’d just seen.
2015 Ed Servais (Spomer / WBR)
The 2015 season featured an immense down year for the Musketeers as they failed to win a single series in conference play. Creighton managed to get back to the conference championship game only to meet their New York-based kryptonite in St. John’s lefty Ryan McCormick, falling 8-7 in the championship.
2016 saw an interesting change in the direction these two programs were taking. On one hand, Xavier rolled into conference play without winning a single series in non-conference play, while Creighton started conference play against with a 16-6 record.
On April 18th, 2016 the Omaha World-Herald’s Tom Shatel penned a column about Creighton potentially hosting a regional at TD Ameritrade Park. Creighton went into a series in Provo, Utah against #21 BYU. The Jays themselves had just cracked the top 25 at #25 and they managed to grit out a series win, propelling their resume to “Pretty Much Definitely In The Tournament.”
Meanwhile, Xavier was coming off a series loss to… Georgetown. They bounced back by beating the hell out of Northern Kentucky, got shut out against Indiana, and then were forced to welcome conference superpower St. John’s into Hayden Field. After losing the first game of their Saturday doubleheader 4-2, the Musketeers proceeded to pound the Johnnies in game two, with Daniel Rizzie, Andrew Jernigan, Joe Gellenbeck, and Chris Givin combining for 10 RBI’s and the series tie. On Sunday they shut the Johnnies down and won 1-0. They proceeded to win their next six ballgames by a convincing margin and welcomed the Bluejays to the confines of Hayden Field.
Rollie Lacy was a Creighton legend back in the day (Spomer / WBR)
Rollie Lacy threw an absolute gem, going 8 innings and only allowing three earned while Dave Gerber slammed the door shut in the ninth. The only atypical thing about this ballgame was Danny Woodrow hanging dong in the third inning.
The Musketeers would rely on back-to-back late inning rallies and subsequent walk-offs to win games two and three. Joe Gellenbeck hit a walk off base hit in game two and then mashed the game winning dongshot just a day later, pushing Xavier up the ladder in conference and tossing the gasoline of doubt upon Creighton’s promising season.
Twelve days later the two would meet again in Aberdeen, Maryland in the BIG EAST tournament. And again, Trent Astle twirled a gem, tossing 103 pitches in 5 2/3 innings pitched, allowing just three runs to cross the plate, while his southpaw counterpart in Jeff Albrecht bled out and allowed 4 earned – 5 runs all together – sending the Jays into the loser’s bracket.
After a 10 inning win against St. John’s, Creighton would face the Musketeers again only to get into a slugfest. The Jays jumped out to an early 4-0 lead only for Rylan Bannon and Joe Gellenbeck to hang two run dongshots in the fourth inning to tie the ballgame up. Creighton would end up with runners on 2nd and 3rd with two outs in a one run ballgame only for Danny Woodrow to ground out to short, handing Xavier another BIG EAST championship trophy.
There was a shred of hope that maybe the Jays could still sidestep into the tournament with their impressive record and non-conference performance, but the NCAA thought otherwise. The BIG EAST remained a one-bid league and the Musketeers were sent back to Nashville to play Vanderbilt.
Xavier would pound Vanderbilt into oblivion, beating them 15-1 on their home field. UC Santa Barbara – who’d eventually make the College World Series – took out the Musketeers in both matchups, yet the sheer fact that they beat goliath momentarily shine a light on the dingy and depressing corner of BIG EAST baseball.
In 2017 we were only able to get one regular season match-up between the two teams and it had the same air of victorious splendor that’d preceded it. After Xavier tied the ballgame 1-1 in the 8th inning, Rylan Bannon and All-Creighton closer Dave Gerber squared off in the 9th. On a 1-0 pitch Bannon blasted a dongshot deep into the late Omaha sky, the ball traveling well into the bleachers in left-center field. The score would hold at 2-1 after the Jays failed to plate a run in the bottom half, and with the next two games rained out, Ed Servais and Scott Googins would have to wait until the tournament to face one another again.
Inexplicably, Creighton wound up as regular-season champions after St. John’s failed to beat Villanova on the final weekend of the conference season. After Creighton’s 4-1 win over Seton Hall and Xavier’s 13-3 bashing over St. John’s, the two met in the penultimate semi-final ballgame.
2017 Ed Servais says “don’t make it a ref show this weekend.” (Spomer / WBR)
And as it was scripted before, so shall it be again. Even though Mike Emodi mashed two dongshots in the affair, the Musketeers got a dongshot from a young Conor Grammes and an offensive explosion in the fifth inning. The Jays tried to battle back, but Trey Schramm’s shutdown relief effort vaulted the Musketeers into the championship game, leaving the Jays with a battle against a nationally ranked St. John’s team the following afternoon.
The Jays would get shelled, 10-2, and their season would come to another abrupt halt while Xavier went on to win their third BIG EAST tournament championship.
In their regional, Xavier managed to oust host team Oklahoma and had a legitimate opportunity to beat Louisville to get to a Super for the first time… ever. Xavier was down one with Grammes, Bannon, and Gellenbeck due up in the ninth inning, yet all three failed to reach base, with Grammes and Gellenbeck striking out.
Then, we had the 2018 season, the first full year for Xavier under Billy O’Connor after Scott Googins departed to crosstown rival Cincinnati. The Musketeers went through their own growing pains without Bannon or Gellenbeck, with a young rotation, and a ballpark that wasn’t fit for the newly juiced baseball the NCAA deployed upon the game. In the first game between the two the Jays took out a lot of pent up frustration against the Musketeers, plating 24 runs, littering eight dongshots onto Xavier’s campus, and putting up 39 runs in 3 games. The Musketeers would steal one game in the series, but both teams would miss the conference tournament, depriving us of some theatrics and fireworks at PRASCO Park.
Which leads us to now, in the present day. Where Conor Grammes has broken team records for strikeouts in a single game, where the Xavier pitching staff is still finding its footing, where they were able to upend and gain retribution with a dub against Louisville in ten innings, where they got swept in a three game series against Texas in which every game’s final score was 6-5.
This has more to it now, especially since former Bluejay pitching coach Brian Furlong now regularly wears Xavier-branded gear and has taught the Musketeer pitchers what it’s like to throw a two seam fastball in a cavernous ballpark. This Xavier team beat the tar out of Georgetown and took two of three against offensively challenged yet-still-the-conference-favorite St. John’s. They took two against Butler, where Chris Givin and Allbry Major hung dong in a 13-8 win at Hayden Field, only for the third game to get rained out.
This Xavier team has a ton of offensive firepower, which, they always do. Conor Grammes is slashing .316/.500/.423 with 6 home runs and 20 RBIs. As a team they’ve hit 37 home runs, have collectively slugged .412, and have only sac bunted 19 times this season.
The only soft spot is their pitching. As they’ve hung 37 dongshots, they’ve given up 52. They’re allowing their opponents to hit .285 against them, with 69 doubles and 12 triples. They give up a lot of runs – but that’s always been by design. They’re never truly out of a game until that 27th out has been made, damn their inefficiencies.
They’re likely going to start Damien Richard (7.45 ERA, 1.62 WHIP) on Friday night, Griffin Lanoue (6.69 ERA, 1.63 WHIP) on Saturday, and Conor Grammes (5.53 ERA, 1.54 WHIP) on Sunday.