But with the local baseball talent compared to local basketball talent, I could argue baseball could get very good in just a couple cycles compared to Nebraska basketball and what they are up against.
I agree with this.
But with the local baseball talent compared to local basketball talent, I could argue baseball could get very good in just a couple cycles compared to Nebraska basketball and what they are up against.
I'm actually intrigued with the discussion...I agree with this.
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.
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.
Academics and protecting the athlete. That's basically it.why does the B1G insist on hamstringing it's teams in Baseball? You would think as a conference they would want to do anything and everything they could to have their teams be successful. Why be stricter than the NCAA says we have to be?
Academics and protecting the athlete. That's basically it.
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).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?
Academics and protecting the athlete. That's basically it.
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.I guess I don't understand how fewer scholarships is protecting the athlete or promoting academics? Would be nice to see this rule changed!
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.Thanks for the explanation, it would be nice to see that rule changed since the draft ha such a big impact on college baseball.