Chad Christensen posted some gaudy numbers during his high school baseball career at Cedar Rapids Washington.

Now he's doing the same thing in college for the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

Christensen went 2-for-4 and hit another home run Friday as Nebraska belted Louisiana Tech, 22-3, before 2,918 fans on a warm day at Hawks Field in Lincoln, Neb.

Christensen is hitting a robust .413 with five homers and 25 RBIs for the streaking Cornhuskers, who have won 13 of their last 16 games and are 13-6 overall for the campaign.

He's also excelled at shortstop, where he's committed only one error in 92 chances for a fielding percentage of .989.

Christensen, a 6-foot-3 junior, hit .262 as a freshman at Nebraska and raised the mark to .292 as a sophomore, but now he's blossomed into one of the top hitters in the Big Ten Conference. He leads the league in hits and RBIs and ranks second in homers and total bases.

"I'm feeling good," he told the Metro Sports Report in a phone interview. "I think things are going pretty well for us right now."

Christensen, 21, said he's learned a lot about hitting this season from Darin Erstad, who became Nebraska's new head coach this year. Erstad played in the Major Leagues for 14 seasons and was a two-time all-star who hit .282 for his career.

"I've learned to be a smarter hitter," Christensen said. "He's always fun to be around, the way he goes about his business every day. He takes it very seriously. You can learn a lot from being around the guy.

"He's all about doing what it takes to win," Christensen said. "He'll talk situations with us, like sitting on certain pitches in certain counts. I've learned a lot and it's definitely helped me as a hitter."

Christensen played the first three games of the season in right field, but he returned to shorstop for the fourth game of the season and hasn't budged since. He was supposed to stay in the outfield this year, but the Cornhuskers needed him back in the infield.

"He hadn't taken any ground balls since August pretty much, and he made the change like he hadn't missed one day there," said Austin Christensen, Chad's younger brother who is a freshman at Nebraska this year. "He's doing very well. He's pretty much led our team."

Austin Christensen, a left-handed pitcher and first baseman, has been nursing a strained ligament in his left elbow and has not played this season, but hopes to start playing in a few weeks.

Chad Christensen socked 42 home runs and drove in 163 runs during his all-state career at Cedar Rapids Washington. He hit .524 with 16 homers and 49 RBIs as a senior when he led the Warriors to the state tournament.

He hit six homers and drove in 15 runs as a freshman at Nebraska, then had only one homer and 16 RBIs as a sophomore. Now his numbers as a junior are starting to match his production in high school.

Nebraska will begin its first season of Big Ten competition with a three-game series against Illinois on March 23-25 after switching from the Big 12 Conference. The Cornhuskers will host the Iowa Hawkeyes in a three-game set on April 6-8.

"Everyone is really excited to be playing in the Big Ten," Chad Christensen said. "It's going to different."

Nebraska has been drawing big crowds at home this season and had 5,298 in the stands for a game against California on March 10.

"I know people are really excited about the program this year and we're trying to do whatever we can to win for them every day," Christensen remarked.

He's certainly doing his part.