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Recruiting improvement under Bolt/Michigan recruiting

A new regime starts for Husker baseball with a press conference at 11AM. Darin Erstad recruited well on a national level, but there were some things that he could have done better. Let's take a look:

Keep local talent - Two levels of this here. The first, we needed to recruit more, period. The quantity could be better and there's plenty of talent to go around. A guy like Mojo Hagge being a 4 year starter for us after walking into our coaches office after being enrolled at Nebraska and asking to walk-on is probably example number 100 of things that point to us needing to do better. Hagge, while not going to be all-conference, was most likely the 15th best player in his senior class. We can get some guys like him with the minimum scholarship amount. The second thing with local talent, is our best guys are going to play in the SEC or Big12 currently. How do we reverse that? And can we reverse that? A guy like Max Anderson at Millard West is committed to where Bolt came from. Is it possible to stop that from happening? Hoping Bolt will show us these next couple classes.

Keeping local JUCO talent - This is basically the third step of the first point. There are kids like Michael Helman and Nolan Hoffman who would have wlaked on to Nebraska out of high school. But for them to improve, JUCO was probably the best route. We could have grabbed them after only one year at JUCO, but we didn't. They ended up both going to A&M after year 2 at Hutch, and both getting drafted. From Lincoln Southeast and Lincoln Pius to drafted, with never having a walk-on offer from Nebraska.

Development - To go along with that previous paragraph, I don't know if those two kids would have got drafted if they walked on to Nebraska out of high school. The reason I think Erstad did so well recruiting is because we didn't see a ton of development year over year with guys. For every Joe Acker or others that improved, there were just as many that went Altavilla and got worse. I also know one of the catchers we used to have said they really don't talk hitting mechanics, but just approach and what to look for. I am thinking Bolt and Harvell will get us looking much different offensively.

JUCO talent - This is just way too important anymore in college baseball. The administration wouldn't let Erstad do it for the first part of his career, which is one of the reasons I defended Erstad so much, a lot of things were out of his control. With Moos and academics shifted now, we can go get guys like Palensky. Imagine if we could get 2-3 guys a year like him from the JUCO ranks instead of only having one like him on our team? We will see if the JUCO commits increase under Bolt. I suspect they will.

SOMEONE HELP ME FIGURE THIS OUT:

How Univ of Michigan head coach Erik Bakich has put together his team is nothing short of phenomenal. It's why teams like Stanford and South Carolina pursued him for their coaching spot. While he was still searching for the kind of success they are having now at that time, he was certainly working towards something. These tweets got me thinking:





In a conference that A) doesn't let you recruit like you should and B) in a sport that doesn't give full scholarships, one of the first things I would do if I were Bolt (with the help of Moos) is find out what Michigan is able to do differently and try and mimic it. Anything above what you can offer on their baseball scholarship goes a long ways.
 



Bolt said he is starting with keeping Nebraska talent in Nebraska...there's the first thing in OP.
Ya, proof will be in the pudding. Every coach everywhere says that.

He also touched on kids needing to go JUCO so talking with those coaches so they get first dibs to get them back. That will be key.
 

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