1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - What a time to be a Husker!.... Right? - May 31st, 2026 - 11:00am

Episode Date: June 1, 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. Sunday, oh, it is a great day to be a Husker. 19 track and field athletes qualified for NCAA Regional. 19. One of them is considered the national favorite. Husker softball in the land of the giants.

They take on Alabama, face the number one softball team in the country. It doesn't go their way. Measure and remasure. Here comes the Texas Longhorns, and we do not have to explain who they are, why this matters. baseball in the land of the Giants. SEC power. Ole Miss comes to town. Don't play perfect, don't pitch perfect. SEC finds a way. Ole Miss finds a way.

Guess what? So what? Here comes the Arizona State Sun Devils. 2 p.m. Big day. Last night in Dallas, Texas. R.A.F. 9. RIF 9

3 Huskers Christopher Vento Antrell Taylor and Ridge Lovett go down there and take on the Giants this big boy pro wrestling Real American Freestyle the ninth prime premier event

in history on a card with some of the great mixed martial artists and wrestlers in history and among them three Huskers three young Huskers, invited, paid, fought. Trelli didn't go well, he falls, eight nothing, but they will see him again.

Christopher Mentel falls eight five and a brawl, absolute brawl. They will see him again. So in 21, by the way. Pay, pay, pay. Yeah. This is career work now, right? Career work. Well, it's just the start of it.

Antril Taylor's 22, Minto's 21. The guys they're going up against we're both in their 30s. All of that, right? Like they're in the big boy. When I say, and I'm saying this for Husky fans to be proud. Because amongst those, and then facing an Olympic medalist and a several-time world champion finalist, Ridge Lovett upsets the world and stums R.AF 9 by winning. career pass and trajectory changed.

The forward and up is now really forward and really up. I was just going to say it was forwarded up and he just keeps doubling down. Right. A great night that even if you don't have the results that you wish for or hope for, the fact that you're in that space, an elite status competing against the best that there is, there's only eight softball programs. the discussion. There's only

16 regional hosts. Well done. Hoskos. Harrison, I will ask you, kind sir, if you would please to say thank you to our sponsors who make the coverage happen all week and long.

Yeah, absolutely. So, of course, we want to shout out our sponsors, especially because you don't really give an opportunity to last night with the game being suspended until later today at noon. A1 Automotive, Arbor Axehouse, Hamilton Telecommunications, Salarian, Hunt, irrigation, Union Bank and Trust, and Rods, Power, Sports, A1 Automotive, always honest answers.

So about celebrating one year at 510 State Hill Drive in South Lincoln and now also open in sewer. Yeah, it's really cool. Nick Sainer, of course, in Oklahoma City. He just put a preview video out too, what he's expecting. If those want to follow the 937, any of the social media platforms, 937 to take it. Nick Stainer's got a preview on there. And again, with those fine folks who, who. who helped that sort of thing happen,

that sort of coverage happened. We greatly appreciate that. And in the space that we're in, we're talking about, I mean, Jake Sorensen is down at the building, down at Haymarket. Bach is down at the Haymarket.

I will probably go down at 2 o'clock, make myself available. Jake Square plus DP, not a bad crew. Yeah, to go down. And at some point, I will really yell about, some of the stuff that goes on down there um not today okay fair enough not today

not today i will say the white ticket gear though the white ticket that looks so clean i was able to find you guys on tv immediately it pops right it's a nice look it's pop i wore the black and jake both jakes wore the white the white dry fit full over yeah okay those were too which i need to make sure i get more of yeah quite frankly um game change it is game changer along the way. Of course, we are live. 402, 464, 64, 5685. If you want to be a part of what we're doing, of course, we're on all the live video streams from the text line. Kevin in Southwest, Lincoln says this. He thinks Husker baseball is toast. Ole and ASU hit the ball harder than any big 10 teams can. Ah. You see LA or. I mean, they're great. They're great. Don't get

me wrong. Baseball is baseball. And then you're in playoff baseball. as a baseball player, I'll tell you, time of year matters, matchups matter, pitching matters. And you're often facing aces. So your reaction to facing aces often plays into it. Everybody's good. Everybody's good.

Everybody's a bad one. And then is it just your day or not? The reason why the postseason is magical is because it's just, it requires so many pieces. of magic to come together. I'll use Nebraska softball as the story that you get one hit and that one hits a bomb. But would I say that Nebraska softball is toast?

No. You faced a hot pitcher great. They tell you in postseason that great pitching beats great hitting until it doesn't. There's some 19s and 17s being put up in the opening regionals on both sides. and sophomore. Yeah, UCLA lost the same heritage and they got a rematch today.

It's, it's, again, the matchup that day, there are pitches that I faced closers, full stop guys, right? The best stuff on the roster. Guys that you would face on a Friday night and then you face them again on

Sunday. Rarely did the guy who had the best night Friday have the best day Sunday. if I saw you twice or if you saw me twice. If you had good stuff on Friday and you saw I saw you, I'm smarter than I was. I have some idea.

I've seen it. Now, if you beat me Friday with not your best stuff, I'm in trouble. But if you got me at my best on Friday, oh my. That's baseball. That's baseball. Majorly baseball.

There are so many all-star pitchers who get got by guys down in the lineup. It's just a match-up thing and a day thing. That when your name is called on day five, you don't control whether you have your best stuff that day. You don't. You don't. Ask me about Arizona State on a short night, 13 hours rest. And they didn't really rest because you have to wind down after 1 a.m.

at 1.30 a.m. Right? You've got to wind down. You got to get back to the hotel. You got to get some food in you because you were, you didn't eat, right? You got to get some food in you. You didn't you got to wind down. You got all the therapy, postgame rehab, right?

For pitchers, anybody that threw, got to work the arm. You got to ice it, maybe ice some other body parts, massage, massage, suction cup, treatment. There's a full range, right? Band treatment, resistance treatment, whatever it was. Then you got to get up, you had to get up yesterday morning. eat breakfast and then be at the stadium early on, warm up, try to figure out exactly what tools you have on the tool belt

for that day. Ideally, you sent the pitcher who was going to pitch the next day to bed, right? Early, you send them back, because that's what we would do. We would send players back. If you're pitching, you're not pitching tonight, and it's late, I'm going to send you back to hotel, go sleep. Like, go get off your feet, go save blood.

That's just the start. Are you sending your number two guy back to the hotel to rest? Are you sending the next day's catcher back to the hotel? There's so many moving parts of this thing. And then quite frankly, the loss actually teaches lessons. So if you're willing to learn the lessons of how people got you out, what better memory than a lesson most recently learned? If you got me out with a running slider on Friday,

Friday night at 1230, you better not get me out Saturday afternoon with it. But you don't control it. Matter of fact, you may not see it. They may not throw it again. Harrison, it's there's zero cause for concern about Nebraska baseball. Just go play the game. Go play the game. And you're playing the game against a really good Arizona State team.

You know that. You know they're a good team. You know, they're good offensive. If you tell me they're, they hit better than teams in the Big Ten. And there are some teams that they hit better in the Big Ten. So be it. There are teams that Nebraska hits better than in the Big 12.

Chill. Chill. But if you're the Huskers, how many pitches do you have to burn at 2 o'clock, Harrison? Uh, we're, I love them. All of them. all of them. With it being the elimination game, yeah.

You need 27 out. Yeah. You've got 13 pitchers on the roster, 14. Guess what? Whatever's working. Hey, man. And guess what? If your Division 1,

a real threat in a major conference, you're not carrying a guys who can't get out, who can't get an out, right? If you can get a couple, get the couple. Now, if you get somebody, you can try it out there who bans the first five innings, ACEs, well done.

Well done. But if you can't, load them up. This is a free for all now. This is big business right now. And line yourself up with a full roster of pitchers and arms. Everybody available, situational matchup. certainly matter, but then you have to execute. You have to execute.

Yeah, we were right there with Ole Miss yesterday, too. I mean, we had bases loaded. We just couldn't get any of those runs in there. And then it was kind of the opposite on the flip side. Then Ole Miss pitcher started going up on pitch count. Things started getting a little bit sloppy. We have bases loaded. It's just that game was very close to yesterday.

It felt like it got away, but there was, I can't remember what inning it was. It might have been like the seventh inning, but we traded off where we weren't able to get any runs off a basis loaded and Ole Miss was able to get one. I think they got a couple walks even. And we just didn't execute what we normally see. But again,

this is a team that was until today's loss. They were 24 and 1 at home. Like that's something to just not scoff at. You lost a tournament baseball game. Yeah. Like it's. To Ole Miss, a good respectable team. and you almost had them.

Everybody in the tournaments, respect. Because they had to beat some people to get here. Ask Oklahoma and softball how they're doing. You just had, you, listen to me. Tournament play, and we've been in tournaments when we tried to win tournaments early in the season to get used to

to the psychology. People think the physical aspect is why you get in those early season imitations. But it's the psychology in those early season invitations. You being familiar with playing out of sort for you with that meaningful at bat, right? And all at bats are meaningful. But hey, what do you do? What is your thought process when there's more of a crowd and there's more emphasis on this at bat? How do you prepare for the most

critical at bat that you're at the plate for when a bunt is required, a sacrifice bunt, a bunt for a hit? What is your thinking and what is your what is your reaction to it? What if you're protecting a runner on first? What if it's a hit and run? What is your process? Right? What is your process as the runner on first in that situation? What is your process as a runner and there's a line drive hit?

What is your reaction? Do you understand back on the line drive, not freeze? freezing on the line drive, puts you in a dilemma. It's back on the line drive. Let the ball go through. How are you able to process as a pitcher? The three two count in March

only leads you to the three two count in May and June. What do you do with it? Is this the three two count against a left-hander? If you're a right-hand, there's a three-two count with one out in the inning. Do you need to double play ball on this three two count. Is this a 300 hitter, a 350 hitter, a 20 home run hitter, a two home run hitter?

All of this stuff builds in. People who love baseball understand that there's so many metrics that change, can change the outcome. And you only rely on that day because whatever tendency you have, you can play to a tendency, but the tendency yesterday didn't work. And that's okay. Do you go away from the tendency? No, you stick to the thing that you've seen you have evidence of success with.

So this was a team that in 96% of their home games, it worked. It didn't work yesterday. Which is right there. You don't erase. You don't erase the 24 and 2 record at home at 2 o'clock. You just play the game. You just play the game. And what happens, happens.

Arizona, wait a minute. You know, maybe they like hitting it. Hey, Marky. But I tell you what, I'm not real sure about what happens today. Nobody is. Nobody is. Nobody is. No, that's the beauty of baseball and softball,

especially when you get into coast season, NCAA when you get to postseason, it's absolutely incredible. While we got a little bit of pause, though, to continue to shout out our sponsors, Arbor Axehouse. Father's Day will be here before you know it. dad's throw free on Sunday, June 21st for the purchase of an equivalent amount of axe throwing.

Book your bait at arborax.com located at 18th. And, and, DPA, I do got to ask you, though. I don't know if I've ever seen this happen in a game so far, but yesterday's game, the pitcher, the crowd noise was getting so loud. And shout to Husker Nation on TV, it looked awesome. Whereas getting so loud, he thought his communication, I don't know what the mic in his headset wasn't working. So he goes to the silent.

asked his coach, the coach kind of has a chuckle and says, no, it's working. It's just that loud in here. He takes it out of his ball camp in between pitches. He's just putting it up to his ear and then putting it back down in his pocket. And shout out to the pitcher. He actually pulled out of it despite basses being loaded. I thought they were going to pull him out of it. But it looked like he was rocked. And then he was able to get out of that jam. But I've never seen a situation like that where you see a pitcher just totally beholden to the little microphone that he's got to put up to use at you every time. Well, I mean, all sports have evolved digitally. And we have, you know, you have the dots in football

or the quarterback's helmet. You have the dots in the helmet for the communication with one defender on the field at a time. So it's just hand signals when you were pitching? Or not, you weren't pitching, but when you were playing baseball? Pitching coaching as a coach, it was always head signals. Okay. I would, let me. That's what I thought they were going to go to. I was amazed. They just opted for the. That's what you should. should. That's what made me laugh so much. Well, but he also, I mean, again, this is all the

variance that, yeah, depending on the game, the opponent, the pitcher on the mound, the catcher behind the plate, and the coach,

there's somewhat the Cody just beat Gunter. Clean. I like that. I like that. Beat him clean. We all like that. that if some pitchers like to call their own pitches, but you have to earn the right to do it over a long period of time, right? Over a long period of time.

Some catchers love to call pitches because the catcher sees things that the pitcher doesn't see. And the catcher sees whether the pitcher has good stuff, bad stuff, or otherwise, right? Sometimes it's the skipper because I want control over what's thrown. I see a thing at a different level and exposure than either the pitch or the catcher, depending on who it is. It may be a situation where I happen to see tendency. Maybe I've deciphered signals from the opposing team. And by the time I would want to relay them in, it's too late. Maybe the catcher has seen anything.

Maybe it's foot placement of the batter and he sees, okay, he's struggling with the pitch down the way. so he could say that. It depends. I am not a fan of the voice in the head, but I understand. It's what they're doing now. Yeah. I also had,

so I had my initial plan, which was whoever's calling pitches. Any one of the three could call pitches. As a matter of fact, I would often change from inning to inning so that if you're spying me, I'm giving bogus signals. on somebody else. So you just have no idea.

Right. And somebody else is looking. There's a matter of fact, oh, well, there's a tell when the catcher does it. Okay, now the pitcher's called it. And then I had a thing where whoever, so let's say Harrison Orange is my catcher. I could say, and let's say the pitcher has three pitches, three pitches. Before the inning or before the game, I can say Harrison, if I call you Harrison, it's the heat. meter. It's a one. If I call you by your last name, it's the breaking ball or a breaking ball. If I, if I say, hey, catch, change up. Oh, you know what to call. Pitcher knows what they call it.

There was always a plan to the next plan to the next plan. And that's what happened last night, was it was there. I love it when a pitcher wants to call their own game. Because it means they're committed, they're honest with themselves, right? Because if you think the fastball is working, you're going to throw the fastball well. Right. If you don't think it's working, you don't want me to call the fastball. If you don't think he can get it there.

But the catcher will tell you, the pitcher can often think his breaker's good. the catcher's like, they're on, they're on your curveball. Even if they swung it or not, right? They can see whether they're late, whether they're letting it run deep. Have they adjusted their footwork?

Maybe it's hand placement on the bat. Maybe it's nerves. The catcher also looks down to third base coach. He sees him too. He also has to see the first base coach. And if the third base coach, the first base coach and the runner are getting a little jittery and there's something there,

who do I, I don't want the pitcher to call a pitch out. I want the catcher. I want the catcher because he sees the situation. He sees it. It's all in front of him. It's always going on. It just came to light last night because the crap was so loud. And as a coach, I'm prepared.

What if it's loud? Okay, so what? Harrison. You know, for Ole Miss, maybe that was the game plan. We'll use this time to calm down. And work on our equipment. They rather enjoy it. That's what I was like.

They probably don't mind this little pause of the action. Yeah. The text is right. The stories of Greg Maddox are mindblow. So Greg Maddick was one of those ones that called his own pitches. But the way that he called his own pitches was fascinating. He would call his pitches based on the way he caught the ball back from the catcher. Oh, I never heard this.

Oh, it's a fantastic story of if he, like if he caught it. you know, open. Yeah. If he caught it walking towards the catcher. If he caught it with two hands, if he caught it underhand,

whatever it may be. There's a, I'll find the clip, but it's a great thing, right? And that was the sign of how he was going to go through the next pitch. And that was the catcher knew what the next pitch was. So did he admit it or did people eventually crack the code? No,

he admitted it three years ago. That's incredible. Three years ago. It was the story. of Mike Musina when he was with the Yankees to finish his career and he's throwing a complete game. Musina's calling pitches. As a matter of fact, Messina's telling the catcher, it doesn't matter what you call, I'm throwing what I'm throwing.

And it's working. And Joe Tori would say, if it's working, call your own game. It's only when it's not working. And he gets to the ninth inning and Tori thinks he's done, right? He looks at the catcher, catches like, yeah, you know, some signal. And Tori begins to come out to the mound to take the ball from Mike Messina. And Mike Messina lays into Joe Tori. You stay in the dugout.

I'm finishing this. As a skipper, hey, when I give you the ball, the last thing I say to my pitchers, here, take the ball. I don't want it back until after the last hour. every pitcher every place program i ever coached in those are the final words and that was the thing you give it back to me when you're ready i don't ever want to take it from you you give it back to me when you're done and that's my favorite thing that's my favorite thing about it but yeah it's a pretty cool story with the with the maddox i'll find the clip during a break

Perfect. All right. With that being said, we'll throw it to break. Let's get one more sponsor in here before we do. So Hamilton Telecommunications celebrating 125 years of innovation and service connecting your world with the latest in communications, technology products and services. Learn more at Hamilton.com. One-on-one with DP talking a lot of baseball, softball here. You guys are always welcome to join in as you have been so far. Appreciate you text in at 402, 464, 5685. Don't go anywhere. We'll be back in a bit.