The Creighton Bluejay baseball team dropped two of three over the weekend in a non-conference series against Winthrop. After taking the series opener 7-1, the Jays dropped the next two games of the series 4-0 and 2-1.

After starting out slowly at the plate, (scoring just seven runs in the first four games) the Jays seemed to have turned the corner at the plate. Even though wins did not come immediately, run production looked like it would not be a problem, especially after the explosion in the home series against Utah Valley where Creighton scored 28 runs in winning the last three games of the series. After the 7-1 win on Friday, it looked like a great chance for the Jays to win their third series in a row.

However the bats went silent on the weekend with the Jays plating only one run in two games. “I was encouraged after Friday that we had turned the corner with our bats,” head coach Ed Servais said. “But the last two days we swung at a lot of pitches in the dirt and took a lot of pitches that were hittable.”

Creighton collected only three hits on Saturday against Winthrop pitcher Nate Pawelczyk. In fact, Pawelczyk had a no hitter for 6 2/3 innings against the Jays. Sunday the Jays were able to slug out eight hits but could never get the big hit to get the lead. The best chance for the Jays occurred in the eighth when Thomas Luevano and Mike Emodi reached with singles with one out. However Riley Landuyt struck out and Bryce Only hit a hard liner to left that was caught to end the threat.

The most disappointing part of this weekend is wasting a couple of excellent pitching performances by starters Jeff Allbrecht and Rollie Lacy and the bullpen,with freshman Jackson Vescelus becoming a force in the pen. “He jumped up the ladder in a big way.” Servais said about Vescelus. “We needed someone besides Dave and Ethan in the pen and now with Jackson and Grant Spranger we have a bullpen that’s four deep.”

The biggest week of the season is ahead for Creighton as the Jays have four games this week. On Tuesday Creighton travels to Lincoln to take on Nebraska in the first of three meetings between the in state rivals. Then this weekend the Bluejays begin the Big East season by hosting preseason favorite and nationally ranked St. Johns in a three game series. I asked coach Servais what he hopes to learn from his team after this week. “Have we grown up a little bit? Have we grown up so we can play in these games? We practice to put our players in position to play in these types of games,” coach Servais said. “I hope by next Sunday we will have a better feel about the growth of the team.”

The game in Lincoln is a 6:35 pm start and can be seen on BTN. In the conference opening series this weekend the Jays and Red Storm will play Friday and Saturday night at 6:30 pm and Sunday at noon.