Baseball Postseason Play?

[da skers]

I don't believe Osborne would say anything to the press that he feels would put added pressure on the team. He has also not shied away from explicitly stating when a coach will be back the next season. That hasn't happened, because the last time I heard him say anything, Nebraska still had a shot to qualify for the Big 12 Tournament. A friend of mine who is pretty close to the athletic dept. tells me there were benchmarks, and none of them have been met, and Osborne will make a move. I don't have any reason to doubt him.

I hope you're right. Baseball games are too fun of an event to be wasted with having a crappy team. I'm not going to demand CWS appearances every other year like some people on this board probably do, but I feel like with the facilities and talent we can pull in, we should at least be qualifying for the NCAA tournament nearly every year. Here's to hoping your friend is right.

 

Any input on possible replacements? I think we'd all love Erstad, especially since a few players I know say they love the guy, but apparently he doesn't really want the position.

Will Bolt was the only candidate mentioned. If it had been anybody other than who told me, I would be skeptical, but this guy is always right. Even so, I will be nervous until Osborne himself says something.

Thats a good source then. Will's name came up midway through B12 Play. Its my understanding MA basically got the Billy C conversation from TO except there really was a reasonable chance for him to accomplish what he needed to do to stay around another year. Win enough to get into the B12 tourney showing some progress and we'll move on to next year. That didn't happen and it really should have been very easy.

 

I know there were some outside coaches that all stated MA is a great guy, good recruiter, but lacks what it takes to be a great head coach. The biggest knock was he tried to micro manage with his coaching and it prevented the kids from developing leadership roles on the field which lead to collapse. There is one UNL alumni who is friends with TO that has a kid coming up through the high school ranks and is a top rated prospect that is trying to decided between UNL and a couple other big name baseball schools. According to him he told Tom he really couldn't allow the kid to play for MA because of the lack of development (which came from pro scouts) of highly rated players and the state of the program that he felt during visits. I think that opened some eyes.

 

Besides Bolt the other name I've heard pretty regularly is Brian O'Connor. I've got a couple of guys, one who's talked to people very close to him that say he's interested and I've got a guy who says he's spoken other people close and he says he's not. Could be a Bo to Miami kind of thing. I know he's not 100% happy where he's at and he's got family close to here. Also there was one report that the coach at Kent State might be a candidate. I think any of them would be good.

 

I think we'll probably still see Erstad around the program as he's pretty tight with Paul Meyers.