I agree with this.
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Why Baseball should be our #3 sport
- Thread starter BornRed
- Start date
I agree with this.
ShortSideOption
Guest
I'm actually intrigued with the discussion...
Should the fact we are in one of the top basketball conferences and have a state of the art arena trump having less local talent and minimal tradition/success? Or should baseball being in a 9th or 10th best conference with B1G scholarship restrictions be above them because local talent is pretty good and we have great facilities?
Both have their hurdles.
IMO, basketball has a few built-in edges over baseball.
1. It's an easy experience. Even my wife (who couldn't care less about NU athletics) likes going to basketball games because the games are relatively short, and getting in and out (assuming you leave before the buzzer) is a breeze. Assuming we leave the game at the 4 minute timeout, it's literally 2 hours from the time we pull out of the driveway to the time we pull back in. Haymarket Park is convenient as well but baseball games are a bit more of a commitment.
2. Lincoln isn't exactly San Diego and baseball season starts as soon as weather starts getting nice and people can get out of the house and do stuff outside. Personally, I'm in golf mode once April hits.
I accept that the HS baseball talent in the state is quite a bit deeper than the basketball talent. However, it's been hard to tell during the last decade because we haven't done a very good job of getting the in-state basketball talent to NU.
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I understand the difficulty of the move to the Big 10 for our baseball program. As mentioned earlier though, there is much more baseball talent in this state than basketball. Not only that, the baseball program has the luxury of playing against a conference of other programs who don’t care a whole lot about baseball. What is the Big 10, the 7th best baseball conference? My point is that Nebraska basketball has less local talent AND plays in a historically talented, Top 3 league. I think it is significantly harder for out basketball program than it is for our baseball program although neither program should be historically so horrible.
All things equal, Nebraska basketball will always be the bigger program. We seen the how popular Nebraska baseball was during it’s CWS runs. The equivalent of that would be an Elite 8 run for our basketball team. Imagine if our basketball team made an Elite 8 run next year? It would be a waaaay bigger deal than our CWS teams.
All things equal, Nebraska basketball will always be the bigger program. We seen the how popular Nebraska baseball was during it’s CWS runs. The equivalent of that would be an Elite 8 run for our basketball team. Imagine if our basketball team made an Elite 8 run next year? It would be a waaaay bigger deal than our CWS teams.
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I believe while it is easier for Nebraska baseball to be successful in the Big Ten than the Big 12, I think it was easier for NU baseball to be successful nationally as a part of the Big 12 rather than the Big Ten. I'd much rather try to recruit a kid to play baseball for a Big 12 school than a Big Ten school.
ShortSideOption
Guest
Academics and protecting the athlete. That's basically it.
You mentioned coaching change earlier, do think if Nebraska would change coaches do you think hiring someone with connections to say California or Texas would be better or do you think there is a high school coach in Nebraska that could make the move, maybe to help keep the local kids around?
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ShortSideOption
Guest
In speaking about assistant coaches, I don't think getting a west coach connection would help. We need a local guy or JUCO guy. Silva was in charge of local recruiting up til a few years ago when Erstad took it over and look at our 2018 class. But Silva is kind of frowned upon right now locally, and he is in charge of Iowa and Heller has put the fence up to that state now. In Silva's defense, a couple of the out of state guys he recruited for his pitching staff in 2018 just got drafted but are still coming here. We have plenty of talent around here to get us where we want to be. I still don't understand what Kirby brings to the table, I would have hired Christy from A&M. Lincoln Southeast graduate (local connection), and played in the Jayhawk JUCO conference (JUCO connection).
Not to get too deep into it here, but Nebraska could do themselves a favor by getting a few Nebraska kids every year at the 25% scholarship minimum. They then just need to keep track of the kids that go JUCO and knock it out of the park (pun intended). Helman and Hoffman down at Hutch would have came back to Lincoln after their freshmen year, but we didn't do it and then all of a sudden SEC schools come into the mix. We learned our lesson and grabbed Palensky after hitting .400 and having 70+ RBIs. I'd like to see that trend continue where we find one Nebraska high schooler a year to bring back. I also know it doesn't always line up that way.
I guess I don't understand how fewer scholarships is protecting the athlete or promoting academics? Would be nice to see this rule changed!
ShortSideOption
Guest
The B1G allows the same amount of scholarships as the SEC or Big12. The issue is, they never let you "protect" yourself like Arkansas and other teams. For example, Arkansas has 23 guys committed in their 2018 class, they did that because they had close to a dozen players drafted and then their high school recruits could also get drafted. The SEC allows them to "recruit over" who may get drafted and leave early. In the B1G, you can not give a persons scholarship away to a recruit until that person has officially signed. The perfect example is Jesse Wilkening. He got drafted, but we couldn't recruit to it, so we now have about 75% of a scholarship sitting around to use. So while the good JUCOs are already picked over, we have to now go find some guy that SEC schools deemed "isn't quite ready" and see if we can find one they overlooked. Guys like Helman and Hoffman who got drafted from A&M were there for us to take after their freshmen year at JUCO. And we grabbed Palensky from Beatrice JUCO.
You could go get a guy like Logan Sartori from Hutch, but he's an infielder and we just brought in two or three really good ones from high school.
ShortSideOption
Guest
Not a problem. The B1G really handcuffs their baseball teams. It's why you can have a down year every few years. But Nebraska had a ton of money for the 2018 class and they put it to great use. I think this class is better than the 2013 class that was ranked 11th in the nation by Baseball America. We just don't have the quantity to get a higher ranking. And we hauled in a ton of local recruits which is really all you need to do to compete in the B1G in mine and other peoples opinions on this board.
