Basil, I don't think you are far off at all...
My main frustration with this current staff is that they aren't doing well locally recruiting. Like you said, Erstad can tell me to go pound sand with his resume, but I think they work a lot harder recruiting than they have to. You look at the two best players in-state this year, one is heading to Texas A&M and the other is heading to Arkansas. Nebraska has 3 in-state commits for the 2016, 2017, and 2018 cycles. The 2018 kid hadn't even played varsity yet and we offered. Connor Curry last year I had a few coach friends that could argue he was their third best pitcher on their team because Hoffman was there and they still have a righty that is pretty solid. You could also argue that Jayhawk league is pretty similar to the B1G, there's some teams that would beat Northwestern pretty consistently down there, and Hoffman heads down there and is 5-1 with a 5:1 K to walk ratio. Hoffman had great grades and i'm 99% sure he would have walked on if Erstad asked him to, the kid LOVES the Huskers. But we offer Curry and Young in-state because they are left-handed arms, I get it but I don't. This current year, Nebraska asked a kid from Lincoln Northeast to walk-on who throws about 90mph from the mound already. Hutch told him to come down for a year and tehy would turn that in to an SEC offer. He had 4 doubles and 7 RBIs the other day from the plate. You think of Schleppenbach and I get that he is struggling this year but had to go to Hutch before coming up and hitting .300 for us his first year here and is solid in the field. Meyers is a staple for us, Placzek, etc. Hellman is down at Hutch tearing it up from Pius in his first year. We already discussed Hoffman from Lincoln Southeast.
Now this is a tough conversation because I think you absolutely have to go get the studs like Wilkening and Boldt and pay them that 80%. Schreiber is mashing the ball, Miller is a staple, Reveles is a leader, Alvarado has been a great addition, and so on. But Waldron as a true freshman is arguably our most consistent pitcher with only 6 walks on the season and they had to go 45 miles to recruit him from Omaha Westside. And to be honest my buddy that coaches is steering the one kid towards the Big12 or SEC because he never hears from the Nebraska staff. Our best year we ever had was when we had two local kids as our 1/2 pitchers. Joba and Dorn were beasts, and I get that you have to have that talent laying around. You have a kid from Millard West that went to Iowa Western and is now playing for 22-7 TCU and had their game winning hit the other day.
I think they could solve a lot of problems and have extremely peak interest doing more local recruiting and have similar if not better results.