Under the Radar: Creighton, Nebraska-Omaha Off To Hot Starts Despite Cold Weather

Image credit: Creighton outfielder Will Robertson (Courtesy of Creighton)

The weather this winter and early spring has been brutal in Omaha.

For evidence, look no further than the schedules of the city’s two Division I baseball programs, Nebraska-Omaha and Creighton.

Neither team had played a game at their home field until this week, and Omaha still won’t until this weekend. That’s not all that uncommon on its own, as most Midwest programs have only begun playing home games in the last two weeks or so.

But how that has come to be for Omaha and Creighton is much more out of the ordinary.

The Bluejays have had five scheduled home games canceled, including a home series against Purdue set for March 8-10, and another game was postponed.

Having been at Creighton for more than two decades now, coach Ed Servais knows his way around a tough Omaha winter, but this one has been on another level.  

“It’s by far the worst,” Servais said. “We normally have played eight or nine, ten (home) games at this stage. We finally played our first one (Tuesday). We had a very short workout on Monday of about an hour. (It was) the first time we had been on dirt for practice all year.”

Between the two programs, they’ve also had to move the location of a combined nine scheduled home games.

Creighton’s games were moved in a pretty traditional way. When things weren’t looking good for their series last weekend against Maryland, they opted to just move it to the Terrapins’ home field in College Park, where the presence of turf went a long way toward ensuring that the games would be played.

The Mavericks, on the other hand, have taken a different approach. They’ve played their last six home games, all in conference play, at Omaha-area high schools.

The entirety of their series with North Dakota State was held at Millard North High, located about eight miles from the Omaha campus.

Then, the Friday game of their series with Purdue-Fort Wayne was held at Skutt Catholic High, with the final two games of the series taking place at Creighton Prep.

It’s situations like that where it pays to have your entire coaching staff from the Omaha area, because if you need field space, you know who to call.

“I got on the phone and just called up my old high school coach (Dave Cork at Millard North) to see if there were some slots open for that weekend,” Omaha coach Evan Porter said. “He’s great. It was great playing for him, and now that relationship has carried on in a different style.

“The second weekend, we were on two different high school fields here in Omaha. One was our assistant coach’s (Brett Swain) high school, Omaha Skutt. They had been working on the field for the last two weeks, which we hadn’t been able to do with ours since we’ve been on the road.”

The unique locations, where the Mavericks are not the primary tenant, also created unique game times. The three games against NDSU started at 6 p.m., 12 p.m., and 2:35 p.m., with the Fort Wayne series featuring 6 p.m., 6 p.m., and 11 a.m. first pitches. You often hear coaches saying their team is ready to play anyone, anytime, anywhere, but perhaps it’s not meant quite this literally.

But for the Mavericks, that approach is about more than just logistics. Sure, they didn’t want to lose games on their schedule or find a neutral location because it can create some headaches, but more than that, they just want to play.

“Even if it’s 32 degrees and the real feel is ten degrees lower, but we’ve got a place to play, we’re going to do all we can to get those games in,” Porter said.

And honestly, when a team is playing as well as his team is, who can blame them for itching to get on the field?

Omaha is 14-6-1 and after last weekend was riding a 10-game winning streak, the longest active streak in the country, which was snapped with a loss Tuesday at Wichita State. Omaha’s sweeps the last two weekends have it off to a 6-0 start in Summit League play.

Pitching and defense has been the name of the game for the Mavericks thus far. In the field, a .982 fielding percentage has them inside the top ten in the country. And on the mound, a pitching staff led by sixth-year senior righthander Payton Kinney has helped make run prevention a real strength.

Kinney will go into this weekend with a 5-0 record, 0.69 ERA, and .173 opponent average in 39 innings. He’s thrown eight innings in each of his last three starts, as he looks to put together the type of season he showed glimpses of having last season before he was derailed by injury. 

“It’s a really great story, too. Last year would have been his fifth-year senior year. He threw a no-hitter against Ohio University down in Atlanta on the third weekend, and it’s my fault that I kept him out there too long because he had a no-hitter going, and I think he threw around 130 pitches. The next week, we were out at BYU, and he was starting the third game that weekend and he had some forearm issues.

“We were trying to see if we could push him to get him back for later in the season last year. But once it was kind of a lingering issue, we applied for a sixth year with the NCAA and our trainer last year just came up with a brilliant throwing program to get him ready for fall ball. Thankfully, Payton was willing to do it and come back for his sixth year. A lot of guys, sometimes in those situations, maybe would just want to move on and start real life, but we’re sure happy he’s back.”

Similarly, despite dealing with their own scheduling rigmarole, Creighton has made the best of things. It went to the East Coast and swept its series with Maryland in three close games that were all decided by two runs or fewer.

After losing two of three the previous weekend on the road against Evansville, it was just what the Bluejays needed to get back on track. They are 11-6 with an intriguing series against former Missouri Valley Conference foe Illinois State on tap this weekend.

“You could see with each inning that we played, we just got a little more comfortable, especially defensively,” Servais said. “I thought we played really well out there defensively, with the exception of the last four innings on Sunday. We started to see the level of defense that I believe we’re capable of.”

As their defense is rounding into form, a talented starting rotation of righthander Mitch Ragan, lefthander Denson Hull and righthander Evan Johnson has started to tap into its potential.

Ragan struck out ten in seven innings against the Terps, allowing just five hits and two runs. Hull lasted just 4.1 innings the next day, but he held Maryland scoreless, and Johnson capped off a weekend of solid starts by throwing 6.1 scoreless innings with just two hits allowed.

Like Omaha this season, Creighton’s bread and butter has always been pitching and defense, but its offense is a bit more physical than it has been. It has 20 homers as a team already, which is more, for example, than a 38-win Creighton team had in all of 2016. And you have to go back to the 2013 team and its .283 team batting average to find a team with a better batting average as a group than this season’s current .280 batting average.

Preseason All-American outfielder Will Robertson is hitting .286/.412/.543 with three home runs. The Bluejays have also gotten strong offensive production from juniors Jake Holton (.364/.438/.652, 5 HR) and Isaac Collins (.320/.407/.533, 10 SB).

Now, the trick for both Omaha-based teams is finishing strong, because neither is a stranger to being in this particular position.

Last year, the Bluejays were 17-6 entering the start of Big East play but managed to win just two of their six conference series. So, despite a solid RPI that, all things equal, would have put them at least in the at-large discussion, they never really stood a chance. And they lost all opportunities for the postseason once their 8-9 Big East record kept them out of the conference tournament.  

“Continual improvement,” Servais said of the key to making a second-half run. “We’ve always, I think, done a good job with that. Sometimes Northern teams do a better job (of that) because we’re stuck indoors and then we get outside and we get a chance to practice on a more consistent basis, and you see a lot of Northern teams really improve as the season goes on. I’d like to see us do that this year. I think if we do, we have a chance.”

Meanwhile, getting off to fast starts in the Summit League is not new for Omaha. It started 6-0 in conference play as recently as 2015, and it was 5-1 in both 2016 and 2018.

But only once, in 2016, did the Mavericks parlay that quick start into a league record better than .500, and they’re still looking for the program’s first regional appearance, which, in the Summit League, will almost certainly have to come by virtue of winning the conference tournament.

For that matter, they’re also looking for their first appearance in the Summit League Tournament. In the years when their records were good enough to get them in, such as in 2013 and 2014, when they actually won the league regular season title in the years Oral Roberts was in the Southland Conference, Omaha was ineligible for postseason play due to reclassification restrictions as it moved up from Division II. 

The 2019 season could, then, be a season of a few firsts if the Mavericks play well over the second half of the season, and Porter feels they’ve got the roster to get it done.

“Depth was a big concern for us last year. And this year, so far, it’s proven to be okay for us where we’ve had guys go down and somebody else has been right there to pick up the slack,” Porter said. “I think sustainability is so important in a season to have your guys on the bench ready to go. We talk about that quite a bit, just working while you wait when you’re on the bench or not getting innings on the mound. Keep working because your time is coming.”

If nothing else, you can’t doubt the mental toughness of these two teams. It’s already taxing to spend the first six weeks of the season traveling to play your games, but then having plans shifted around under your feet at the last minute adds another layer of difficulty.

By comparison, playing the rest of the season mostly by the book in continually warmer temperatures with each passing week? That sounds like a piece of cake.