1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Husker Baseball Sweeps Iowa in Front of Record Crowds: May 11th, 11:00am

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

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It's time to go one-on-one with D.P. Coming at you live from the heart of Lincoln America, a 93-7-the-ticket and the Ticketfm.com. Sponsored by the Downtown Lincoln Foundation. Here is your host, Derek Pearson. Monday boomed, everybody out there from a one-on-one on 93-7. The ticket DP is out for a few days. That means you got myself Jake Boccovin in here with Austin Orman for the next two hours. Adam also off today, Adam Kerker, that is, who usually is from 12 to once.

We got two hours of myself and Austin, and we've got plenty to talk about coming off a crazy weekend, especially no loss weekend for softball and baseball going out there and crushing it. We will talk about that. We'll get into some of the NBA lottery, a lot of changes in talks of changes going on in college football, and of course the latest in Nebraska football recruiting that is that is getting more and more interesting by the day. We'll just put it that way. So we can get into all of that. Austin, how's it going today?

Great, Bach. What a, what a weekend in the Ormond household. Got, got the whole family together for a couple graduations and Mother's Day. And it was fun. It was a blast. Perfect weather. Four, I got to be outside for quite a bit of it. Kids handled the sitting at graduation. A lot better than I think would have expected

for a two-year-old and a six-month-old. So shout out the fellow, shout out the fan. Yeah, yeah, that's always good. Where was graduation this year? Was it in Pinnacle Bay? Yes, it was in a PBA was the first one we went to and then Devaney for the second one. Oh, yeah, okay. Well, that's, that's pretty nice. Where was your graduation?

I didn't get graduation, Bob. I was a COVID graduate. You were a COVID grad. And so that's what I, I held that over my brother's head all weekend is that you guys didn't come to my college graduation, but here I am going to both of your college graduations on the same day with two small children. You can thank you later. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What a family man, you are. My graduation was interesting. I had to re-graduation. because we had a graduation set from Memorial Stadium and it rained. Oh, of course. Yeah, we have to do this in Pinnacle Bank. So they did, but it was the first year, I think it was the first year they did Pinnacle Bank Arena. There was like one of the first events.

So that was kind of cool. I, if the football team was winning, maybe there would be more mystique around graduation Memorial Stadium. But to run the risk of weather and, you know, good or like, you know, too nice or too bad, whether it's rain or sun or whatever it is. On top of, maybe I'm just jaded, but I feel like Memorial Stadium's lost a little bit of that mystique to me where I don't need to feel like so accomplished

and graduate on Memorial Stadium, especially when it's not full. You know, if you pack the entire stadium full of people to celebrate graduation, made it like a full on game day, that'd be one thing. But like you're looking at like a class A football size crowd. You know, you're using like even less than that, maybe, you know, because you have everyone packed on one side of the stand.

It's the side of the stands because it's in the morning with baking in the sun and everything. So I don't know. I was proud of my brother when he graduated and it was at Memorial Stadium. I would go again. I don't know if we need to have it at Memorial Stadium. Yeah. I can agree with you. I mean, Lost its mystique is an interesting way of putting it.

But, you know, it just in that way. Yeah. Well, I mean, to a degree, I mean, they're obviously going through their own renovations and losing too many football games. Obviously, it does take a hit at one point. I mean, to graduate there when Nebraska is fighting for championships or something like that, then you feel like you're part of something moving in the right direction. And of course, Nebraska football always have to have the little side bar saying, well, they did technically make progress each of the last year.

So there is that. So we'll see. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. I don't, like I said, mine got rained down. It's not like something I think about often. In fact, I haven't thought about it for a while. to we've got to brought it up here. Like I wish that I was,

be able to graduate at Memorial Stadium more so than anything. But then I also think at the same time, and I'm guilty of this, how many people chose their college based on their football team? And so, you know, a lot of those graduates might, you know,

even if by the time you graduate, you've made different memories, you know campus, you got different ideas. You still might have chose there because you wanted to go to Memorial Stadium. Before I knew what I wanted to do, when I was figuring out where to send my ACT scores, I will give you,

you can probably get two of the schools that I sent my ECT score to. I could give you 50 guesses. I'm not sure you would get the next two. Really? Okay. The first two should be pretty obvious. Duke? Yep.

Nebraska. Yep. Third school that you were interested, huh? I sent it to two other places. Okay. I ended up accepted to all of these, by the way. Nice.

You could have went to Duke, huh? I could have. But again, that's choosing it for the basketball team. That's right. So I have given. So the other schools maybe were more aligned with your professional? No, I didn't actually know what I was going to do with this.

No, you didn't. Okay. Yeah. They wanted to send it to four schools. And so I had to have two filler schools, essentially. You didn't. You weren't even interested in all that much in them. Well, I didn't know if I was, but I just had to send it somewhere.

So let's go with Colorado. It was not Colorado. It was a then Missouri Valley school. Or maybe they just moved to the American. That gives it away. I don't know. It probably does to somebody brighter than me. Missouri Valley to the American.

Basketball and baseball school. Oh, no. I'm going to do. Wichita State. Wichita State, okay. I don't know why, but, you know, I like the Fred Van Fleet, Ron Baker, clean Anthony, early teams.

Yeah, I went down to Wichita. I checked out their game. It's not, this is much post-my graduation. Yeah. And the other one was kind of like an it mid-major before it jumped up to a power conference. Hmm. In a couple sports.

Okay. Is it power conference in football? Power conference and everything now. Oh, okay. No real ties to Nebraska. Oh, man. Well, this is this, so this should be easier. Utah. Bearcats? TCU.

TCU. Okay. Yeah. That makes a little sense. Yeah. Yeah. Thought about being a horn frog. I did.

Very briefly. At least I got my ECT score and said you can come if you want to. Yeah. I did not. Is that what you do? No, they have a little like horn frog. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gigum's A&F.

Yeah, that's right. Okay. Yeah. Oh, well, yeah, TCU, that's kind of interesting, too, because they sent me a letter. I'm not sure why. I never really looked into it. But, yeah, they wanted you, Bach. They must have run it.

I don't know how they found me. I wasn't an exceptional student or anything. I was just some high schooler in Lincoln, but. Good enough for TCU. Yeah, they were interested. But I was not interested in out-of-state tuition. And I wanted to be a house school my whole life. So I had to end up doing that.

I was guilty, definitely guilty of choosing. Well, I might have made a different choice if it wasn't for the in-state tuition thing. There you. That is kind of stuff to get over, stuff to get over. It costs quite a bit to go out of state. There is that as well. I want to ask you, you're a baseball guy. I went to the Husker Iowa game on Saturday.

Of course, Nebraska swept Iowa this past weekend was fantastic. He has a chance of the sweep Creighton on Tuesday. So here in just a couple of days span can sweep Iowa and Creighton, how much better it does it get than that? Of course, Huskers moved up in D1 baseball rankings from 25th to 24th now. And one thing I will say about going was it was it was incredible because I keep saying it and I don't know if, I don't know. It feels like I just can't keep saying the same things. I don't want to go back to it. But if you're around for for Nebraska baseball in the mid 2000s, you know it was like there was fever.

I mean, it was awesome. It was like what it was this weekend, though. And that's what Nebraska baseball was able to do, not only win, but they drew 22,815 fans over three-game series. It's the third largest series in Hock's Field history. So that's quite impressive. In fact, their game on Sunday drew 7,948 fans, which is the new Big 10 record for Nebraska home crowd.

Again, you know, kind of go back to the big 12 days. it feels like there was just kind of more at stake and more people there. But that's what it felt like going back on Saturday. We got some berm seats and had tough time finding a place to lay down our blanket. Got pretty crowd out there. So we ended up going to the outfield behind a pole so I couldn't see all that well. But I took my son. We were walking around.

It was a good day one way or the other. But I wanted to ask you this because I felt like an idiot once I got there. Maybe it's because I've been a while since I've been to Husker games, you know, going to Salt Dogs games or just games in general. I thought, let's get some baseball gear on. And so I was looking around, okay, what baseball jerseys? I haven't had any Husker jerseys. Did you wear no more?

My wife, I put no more on my wife. Nice. She wore no more. I had my Pedro Martinez. So I brought the Red Sox out. And I thought, cool, I'm going to go see what other jerseys people have. And once I got there, I said, maybe this is just a Nebraska thing. And I forgot, everybody was in just Nebraska stuff.

Like, we were the only ones walking around with like major league baseball stuff. And I was like, has this aged? Am I too old now? Did I miss the memo? You're not supposed to do this anymore? Is that just a Nebraska thing? I would guess it's just a Nebraska thing, you know, C of Red, all that.

And so I think the vibe at Nebraska Games is still, hey, it's a Nebraska games. We're going to wear Nebraska gear. I commend you for at least wearing red or red adjacent. Right, right. Red on the front. Yeah, exactly. So you fit the theme in your own way.

I, my understanding of it is that, college baseball is just so much more of that. It's where your school colors. But if you go to a major league baseball game, you can see jerseys from anywhere at any given time. It doesn't matter who's playing. I mean, the Royals games that I've been to,

I mean, obviously it's majority royals stuff. But, I mean, there's always Yankees jerseys. There's always Dodgers jersey. There's always a handful of just completely random ones. Like, you know they're not playing, right?

And this guy isn't on either of these teams. It's just what you have and what you wear. But I think that that doesn't shock me that Nebraska fans would wear Nebraska stuff, especially against Iowa. Yeah. Is a big reason I would think for that. And also because the team needed the sweep in a lot of ways.

You know, it felt like after the way the weekend went to Ohio State, even though, yeah, you're coming home and a road sweep means more than a home sweep, it's Iowa, right? You lost to Ohio State. So let's take the frustrations out on Iowa. They're going to wear red. It's going to be, you know, pro- Nebraska and, you know, pulling specifically for Nebraska.

and so I guess other people didn't have time to have the fun of just breaking out the random jersey they were pouring their heart and soul into their wardrobe as well. Yeah, yeah. I think I made that mistake. And that's fine. It's not a mistake. Give yourself some credit. It's all right. It was awkward. It really was.

My son was wearing a Husker stuff. We don't have a baseball jersey for him. So we dressed him up in the Oscar stuff. Did anyone say anything to you about it? No, no. You're fine. That's not awkward. Yeah, yeah. I just, I kind of felt like that was a baseball thing to do. And then once I got there, it's like, maybe this is like there's something that I miss where we've we've taken away from that but you know to your point I think it's more just the Nebraska baseball fans and the love for

Nebraska baseball and in Nebraska sports in general and everybody's got big red something in their closet you could find which I could have I could have just wore a red t-shirt or a Husker t-shirt or something I've got a few of those but I just didn't have a baseball team yeah yeah and I thought we're going to a baseball game my son hasn't been to do many let's dress up for baseball heck yeah yeah yeah at least I at least I at least I feel a little bit better now that I got that from you. And it was an exciting game two of the weekend. Of course, there was plenty of them, but that came on Saturday. Very, yeah, 7-0-0 lead or close to it in the beginning. And Iowa stormed back. And then Nebraska had to come back at the end was just

a lot of fun. And again, Nebraska baseball doing well. Now look ahead to Tuesday with with Creighton and a chance at a sweep there. Still an outside shot to host a regional. But, but, but, but we'll see. What are your, what are your feeling still on that? Obviously, got to get through Creighton in Minnesota and then probably perform pretty well in the big 10 tournament. People smarter than me are saying that Nebraska still has a chance. Yeah. I still feel like it's less likely.

And I'll refer people to Evan Blan's piece on Omaha.com. Wrote a really good one. And this was a week ago today that this published. So right on the heels of the sweep against Ohio State. And of course, I talked with Evan on on Wednesday, as we do during old school at 430. And Evan said, yeah, it's still absolutely alive. You know, 40 wins is kind of a magic number. Nebraska's RPI, at least at the time of that conversation,

was still certainly within range of hosting, not slam dunk, no doubt hosting. But the road sweep didn't necessarily tank Nebraska's chances. And so with the metrics that the committee uses with what Evan broke down as well, with Nebraska having a great chance to be able to reach 40 regular season wins, it's absolutely on the table for this team. I still think the most likely way for Nebraska to host a regional is to sweep through this week and weekend, right? Take care of Craig and get the season sweep, as you pointed out.

That'll be a talking point. You know, hey, they swept their in-state rival for the first time and heaven knows how many years. Then you go on the road, ruin someone's senior day of Minnesota with a sweep. I've at least take two out of three. but I think you hit 40 regular season wins, then you ought to feel really good about your chances of being a top four seed in the Big Ten tournament,

in which case I think you need to win, what, three games to win everything. And you're good, you're golden. I think the resume could use a boost with a win over, you know, maybe a USC again if you can take all four from them, maybe you want another crack at Oregon to try to even up that season series. And then I think a shot at UCLA goes a long way. And that would probably be in the championship. Nebraska, you know, right now sitting at the two seed behind the Bruin,

so you wouldn't face them until you saw them for the championship game. I, it's there for them. They got to go earn it. They're not going to have it handed to them. Because I think the great example of that Bach is softball. Getting the number four. Yeah. See, number two team in the country by the rankings, which obviously aren't everything,

knocked off their fair share of number one teams, felt like Nebraska was in prime position to move up. But Southern bat and ball sport bias is the thing. The numbers skew their way with the way that they're able to play, you know, more top competition more consistently. And so, yeah, it's great that Nebraska softball is ultimately hosting a regional and a super regional. That was the goal and the path is the path, right?

But it felt nice to get the two and then, you know, host the seven in a potential super as opposed to a four versus five against the team that you're familiar with in Oklahoma State that's familiar with you. So I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer, but I just feel like I'm constantly the one slamming on the brakes for Husker fans. It would be fun.

It would be nice. They have a chance. But take 10% off your expectations and your hopes. And that's probably more likely for where Nebraska is going to land. Yeah, I guess, you know, it's tough to read. Like you said, rankings aren't everything, Nebraska. Again, 24th at the moment, obviously, there's going to be 16 teams that host regionals.

You look at even in the Big Ten, you've got Oregon and USC ranks 16 and 17, obviously UCLA at number one. So it's hard to imagine too many Big Ten teams hosting regionals. And then you look at RPI, which is more favorable to Nebraska. That's where you might have more of Chatskas. Because right now they're listed at number 15 there,

up from 16, but still behind versus usually UCLA at number one in Southern Cal is up at number eight. So again, are you going to have three teams from the Big Ten host regionals? No, Big Ten will probably get one, maybe two if you're lucky. Yeah. So, I mean, it is, again, all remains to be seen. Nebraska baseball.

All they can do is win the games that are in front of them. And of course, it's not the end of the season. If you don't host a regional, still have an opportunity to go make some noise and, and kind of see what happens from there. But of course, that would have mean that the last game that we saw from Nebraska this year, Hey, Market Park is past. Right. And I think that's more likely than not.

But if it is, what a year at home. 23-0 first undefeated home season in the Big Ten era. The only loss Nebraska had at home is to a Kansas team that kind of seems like they're having their dream season. I'm sure Kansas Sports Stock Radio is having the same conversation about the Jayhawks. And even that one was a hard fought game just over a month ago. And Nebraska lost at 5 to 3 here at Haymarket Park against the Jayhawks, which is where you would think that, okay, maybe hosting is more important for this team.

if they're that good at home. Did they have a killer home slate? Not necessarily, but they still handle business. They still won all those games, except for the one against a pretty evenly matched team. Nebraska, then 14 and 13 on the road or a neutral site, which is obviously playing to Nebraska going on the road, which is, you know, above 500. If you can take care of your business at home and, you know, go 500 on the road in neutral, that's fine.

That's kind of been the formula for a lot of these, you know, teams in Nebraska's range. So, yeah, being at home seems like it would be a really big advantage for Nebraska. They've played really well. Have they played NCAA tournament caliber competition at home? Not necessarily. USC and Kansas obviously come to mind. But you like the friendly confines. You like, especially off the support that you just mentioned, what, 22.5,000 people over the three days with a big 10 record crowd yesterday.

That matters in regionals. It absolutely does. Yeah, yeah. It should be fun to see if Nebraska can go. I mean, there will be a lot of fan support there. And you hope that, like you said, maybe that can sway into Nebraska's factor a little bit. You mentioned Kansas there, by the way,

they lost the Creighton there this past week and then got swept by West Virginia this past week. So that's kind of been interesting for them. They fell in the rankings from 7th to 14th and are down to, what, somewhere in the RPA. 22nd. So I know a lot of people are just kind of tracking Kansas because they've had an interesting season

and certainly a couple interesting games with Nebraska this year. And if Creighton, obviously, Nebraska has beaten Creighton twice, but Creighton can beat Kansas, they can beat you. So we'll see what happens there tomorrow. That should be exciting as well. We'll talk a little bit more about softball and go around the world of sports in general, but we'll lead off with softball winning the regular season and conference tournament now

in the Big Ten, and we know their path now to a super regional. We'll talk about that. Coming up next year on one-on-one on 93-7 to take it. Download our app by searching 93. the ticket in your app store. You're listening to one-on-one with DP on 93-7 the ticket in the ticket FM.com.