Nebraska softball stays alive in NCAA Tournament, stuns Wichita State

STILLWATER, Okla. — Relax, Mya Felder told herself. No one pitch is bigger than any other.

The fifth-year senior stared down Wichita State pitcher Lauren Howell from the right-handed batter’s box in what could have been the final at-bat in a Husker uniform. That she was even in a position to extend her career was improbable. What was yet to come was closer to impossible.

Moments earlier, the Huskers had been down to their last out and trailing by three runs. Caitlynn Neal’s home run cut the deficit to one but emptied the bases. Then Billie Andrews walked. Courtney Wallace singled, and Felder had a chance to tie the score for the first time since the first inning. She tried to stay calm as the end of her softball career loomed in front of her.

“It’s not easy,” she said. “I especially like night games, and the energy was crazy tonight. I mean, it was so good. And just when you’re up there it’s something you have to do for yourself, but I think that my experience definitely got me through that tonight.”

Felder rapped a single through the right side, scoring Andrews and knotting the score even. It was the first of two multi-run rallies the Huskers pulled off with their backs to the wall.

The game wouldn’t end for another two innings until Sydney Gray dashed home on Katelyn Caneda’s chopper to second base, grazing her left hand across the plate to give Nebraska a stunning, season-saving 9-8 victory.

It set up a date with Oklahoma State on Sunday. NU needs two wins to advance to Super Regionals.

“We’ve kicked ourselves a lot,” coach Rhonda Revelle said. “We’ve been kicked a lot. We’ve lost in the fashion that Wichita State lost tonight many times. We know what that feels like, and I think that’s why it makes it so special to feel like you have a breakthrough moment at such a significant point in your season.”

The Huskers gathered before the game, and Revelle posed a question: would you rather play in a game that hurts to lose or one where you don’t play well?

The consensus opinion was the former.

“That gives you permission to just go for it,” Revelle said, “because if you’re willing to hurt, then when you feel the joy of winning something like that, it’s really special.”

It set the tone for a team playing with nothing to lose, coming off a gut-punch loss to WSU the night before and a win hours earlier over UMBC. A new chant, “Softball is fun,” rang out from the Husker dugout throughout the game.

It was the approach of Ava Bredwell, the Nebraska catcher who had entered the game with two hits in her past 25 at-bats. She wanted to keep things simple at the plate: see the ball, hit the ball and regain the trust in herself that isn’t always there.

Wichita State retook the lead in the eighth inning on doubles from Lauren Lucas and Lauren Mills against a stretched-thin Wallace in her fifth inning out of the bullpen.

Felder led off the bottom of the frame with a blast to center field. Brooke Andrews singled, and Gray walked, bringing up Bredwell, who had homered that afternoon against UMBC.

Bredwell launched a fly ball over the head of Lucas in center field. For the second time in the three-and-a-half-hour marathon, the Huskers had erased a deficit of multiple runs with the game on the line.

For the first six innings of Saturday’s regional elimination game, the Wichita State lineup had found more from success through power and brute force than patience and grit could bring Nebraska.

Twice, the Huskers methodically manufactured runs against Howell. In the third inning, it took a two-out single from Billie Andrews to get NU on the board. A single, walk, wild pitch and groundout produced another in the fourth.

And each time, Wichita State responded in short order. Mills smoked a sharp, looping line drive over the right-field wall to increase the Shockers’ lead to two runs after Andrews’ RBI, Mills’ second homer of the evening. Krystin Nelson did the same after the Huskers’ second rally with a shot to a similar part of Cowgirl Stadium.

Sarah Harness got the start in the circle for the second straight game, this time against a Wichita State lineup she briefly faced in relief Friday. While Mills made her pay for a pair of mistakes, Harness did enough to keep the Huskers competitive.

Wallace finished the game, pitching the last five innings and allowing four runs.

It was a gutty effort from the duo in Nebraska’s fourth time playing the Shockers. Running on fumes and out of surprises against a powerful lineup, the pitchers did enough. So did the Huskers collectively, and it ended with a mad dash out of the dugout, mobbing Caneda in front of first base as the painful memory of the night before dissipated.

“It’s in one of those special buckets, and it’s not just because of this game,” Revelle said. “It’s because of all the games in the last three weeks that have been really painful, where we’ve been competitive and we’ve been right in it and we’ve maybe let it slip away, or the other team just rallied. So to be on this end of it tonight, it makes it really special.”

After dropping its first regional game, Nebraska found itself in the unenviable position of having to run the table to make it out of the weekend.

There’s still a long way to go, including a game against a thorn in its side later Saturday, but the Huskers took the first step, an incremental movement forward in beating UMBC 3-2.

Nebraska now has its fourth game this season and second this weekend against Wichita State on Saturday night. The Shockers have beaten NU in all three matchups.

The score was tied until Ava Bredwell broke it in the fifth inning with a flyball to left-center field that landed just over the wall. It was her second long fly of the game after she gave a ball a ride for a long out in the second. The catcher entered the game with two hits in her past 25 at-bats and no homers since April 1.

Nebraska got on the board in the third inning. Katelyn Caneda pulled a single through the right side and came around two batters later when Billie Andrews launched a homer to left-center field, a rising line drive that banged off the cutout of Oklahoma State mascot Pistol Pete’s head beyond the wall.

The Huskers could rely heavily on Courtney Wallace during the regular season, but with up to five games packed into a single weekend, they were always going to need at least a few good innings from Sarah Harness to have any chance at advancing.

After finishing the previous night’s game against Wichita State, Harness got the start against UMBC and kept the Retrievers at bay for three innings. The transfer from Southern Illinois pitched around a single in the second inning and a pair of runners in scoring position in the third, pumping the zone with strikes and liberally working in her offspeed pitches.

But after UMBC third baseman Emily Riggs rocketed a liner the opposite way for a game-tying, two-run homer, Harness’ day only lasted one more at bat. Wallace, already in the lineup as the Huskers’ designated player, entered the circle.

Wallace finished the game, pitching the last three and two-thirds innings without allowing a run. Four Retrievers reached base on one hit, a hit by pitch and a pair of walks. The fifth-year senior was stone-faced as she walked off the mound in the seventh inning, the Huskers season and her college career extended but more work left to do.