throwback

Big favorites again Saturday - we have 5 straight outright wins when we're favored in B1G games. Expecting to get #6 tomorrow.

Great win - yes, some hiccups with all the strikeouts, but for a northern team to play as solidly fundamentally as we did today was very impressive. Being able to get outside regularly was a big help. Thought it'd be a high-scoring game, shows what I know. Man, our pitchers were awesome. Baylor can hit, but we did a great job attacking the zone. No walks vs 9 Ks is going to win college baseball games 99 times out of 100. Exactly what Childress demands. Sears was brilliant. Timmerman's heart had to be thumping in his debut, but he did just enough. There's a lot to like there. Perry looked like a different guy today, another year removed from his injury, and Daiss was nasty at the back end. Offense was hit and miss, but I loved the fundamentals we showed. Brumbaugh scoring on the Carey double in the 6th where he didn't slow down until he crossed the plate, knowing there might be a play at 2nd, so he could count that run before the potential third out was made at 2nd base. He never peeked until he crossed the plate. Great base running fundamentals. Instead of hanging his head, Silva runs out that dropped 3rd strike in the 9th, steals a base, and lets us manufacture an insurance run. Also loved how Brumbaugh took the ball the other way to drive in that late run. Didn't try to do too much on a pitch over the outside part of the plate. Carey did the same thing on his RBI double in the 6th. Then Carey and Anglim both yanked pitches in the upper part of the zone and drove in runs, too. They were smartly aggressive with their swings when they got the chance to be because of the pitch location. (Yes, Carey popped his up, but it was still smart hitting.) Those are good fundamentals. Pretty solid day defensively, again that's where being able to get outside quite a bit paid off. Quite a different feeling compared to last year's opener. Will be very interesting to see how tomorrow goes.

We're a slight favorite today - regular-season college baseball betting lines will always seem odd to me, though. I think I'd like the over for sure.

2024 Projected RPI from Boyd’s World http://boydsworld.com/baseball/rpi/rpi_projections2024.html (New quad splits for 2024) Quad 1: Home games vs. RPI 1-25, neutral site games vs. 1-40, road games vs. 1-60 Quad 2: Home games vs. RPI 26-50, neutral site games vs. 41-80, road games vs. 61-120 Quad 3: Home games vs. RPI 51-100, neutral site games vs. 81-160, road games vs. 121-240 Quad 4: Home games vs. RPI 101+, neutral site games vs. 161+, road games vs. 241+ NU Projection RPI 99 Record 28-28 Q1 Games (5) 2 (N) Tex Tech (30 – 1 gm) / Okla (28 – 1 gm) 3 (A) Rutgers (53 – 3 gms) Q2 Games (17) 1 (N) Baylor (74 – 1 gm) 3 (H) Maryland (31 – 3 gms) 13 (A) K-State (79 – 1 gm) / Grand Canyon (64 – 4 gms) / Coll of Char (78 – 4 gms) / Wichita St (115 – 2 gms) / Creigh (77 – 2 gms) Q3 Games (15) 8 (H) Iowa (84 – 3 gms) / K-State (79 – 1 gm) / Creigh (77 – 1 gm) / So. Alabama (55 – 3 gms) 7 (A) Kansas (160 – 1 gm) / Michigan St (189 / 3 gms) / N’western (157 – 3 gms) Q4 Games (19) 16 (H) Indiana (104 – 3 gms) / Ohio St (139 – 3 gms) / Nicholls (156 – 3 gms) / No. Dakota St (117 – 1 gm) / New Mexico St (214 – 3 gms) / Kansas (160 – 1 gm) / Omaha (197 – 1 gm) / So. Dakota St. (226 – 1 gm) 3 (A) Minnesota (256 – 3 gms) Well, this isn’t super encouraging, although I can’t say I’m too surprised where it puts NU. The predictive metrics simply aren’t going to like NU with so many key players to replace. However, if Iowa has an 84 RPI and Indiana is at 104, the B1G might be a one bid league this season. These projections say the B1G will be extremely weak top to bottom. I hope not, but this site was almost dead on when projecting NU a year ago, so who knows? If these projections are at all accurate, we’ll play 11 of our Q1 and Q2 games the first 3 weekends with only 11 more spread throughout the rest of the year. Brutal. And 5 of those final 11 are mid-week games. I guess the good news is we’re #99 in RPI at a projected 28-28 record. Get to 36 to 38 regular season wins and we’ll probably be top 50 RPI, which puts us probably on the right side of the bubble, as long as we don’t tank these first 3 weekends. B1G projected RPIs 2024 (NU doesn’t play underlined teams) Maryland 31 (38-15 projected record) Rutgers 53 (37-18) Iowa 84 (38-18) Michigan 88 (34-22) NU 99 (28-28) Indiana 104 (29-27) Illinois 112 (29-21) Penn St 132 (25-30) Ohio St 139 (25-31) Purdue 152 (28-29) N’western 157 (23-29) Michigan St 189 (24-31) Minnesota 256 (11-38) RPIs for Pac-4 2024 Oregon 14 (33-20) UCLA 25 (33-21) Washington 97 (20-28) USC 100 (23-31) B1G 2023 projections vs actual record / RPI (Boyd’s World) Illinois #98 (28-23) vs #95 (25-27) Indiana #94 (30-24) vs #31 (43-20) Iowa #77 (35-16) vs #32 (44-16) Maryland #37 (41-14) vs #36 (42-21) Michigan #82 (33-20) vs #122 (28-28) Mich St #186 (21-34) vs #69 (33-22) Minny #246 (12-43) vs #209 (18-34) NU #104 (30-25) vs #98 (33-23) N’wstrn #147 (22-30) vs #262 (10-40) Ohio St #116 (26-31) vs #78 (31-25) Penn St #157 (25-30) vs #141 (25-25) Purdue #174 (29-27) vs #207 (24-29) Rutgers #53 (34-21) vs #68 (33-23) 2 missed horribly – Indiana (+63), Mich St (+117) 5 missed average amount – Iowa (+45 spots), Michigan (-40 spots), Ohio St (+38), Minny (+37), Purdue (-33) 5 incredibly close – Illinois (+3), Maryland (+1), NU (+6), Penn St (+16), Rutgers (-15) Missed horribly on N’western, too, but I can’t ding the site for that one considering what a mess their coaching situation was. Generally, though, the site underestimated the B1G last season, so hopefully that’s the case this season as well.

Why the B1G only releases the top 6 teams in its preseason poll is one of those questions for the ages that will never receive a satisfactory answer. https://bigten.org/news/2024/2/9/baseball-postseason-honors.aspx

https://huskers.com/news/2024/02/14/coach-bolt-announces-starting-rotation-and-previews-the-2024-nebraska-baseball-season

Playing with house money tonight. Tall, tall order to bounce back after the emotion of Sunday. No matter what happens tonight, just win the last 4 and get the double bye.

With the especially fat wallets that the B1G and SEC teams now have, it's going to be an interesting off season to see whether Big East, ACC, and Big XII schools are going to be able to complete financially to keep their coaches. At some point that massive dollar discrepancy from the TV deals has to start showing up, whether it's in facilities, head coaching salaries, staff salaries, NIL, etc.

Probably a good idea by Ohio St to get a jump on some of the other potential big name job openings in the B1G alone - Michigan ? Indiana ? USC ?? Has Izzo had enough of NIL and the transfer portal at MSU ?? What about Altman at Oregon ?? With all the money B1G schools have, there are going to be quite a few coaches who are going to get big raises if a chunk of these jobs actually open. I'd expect OSU will swing for the fences and try to lure a currently employed P5 top-end coach. That'll likely be a huge contract that'll reset the market.

That would be my solution, too You could even do it all season - with the odd number of conference teams, having at least one 3-team pod each week would work perfectly. Nobody would need a bye once conference play starts. However, the coaches hate it. So it's an idea that's dead on arrival, unfortunately. Maybe they'll change their minds down the road, but it's not on the table right now.

Best Games - Big Ten - Week 1 Friday Duke v Indiana NU v Baylor Maryland at Geo. Southern Ohio State v Boston Coll. Saturday Illinois v Wake Forest Maryland at Geo. Southern Minnesota v Oregon St Indiana at Coastal Carolina NU v Texas Tech Sunday Maryland at Geo. Southern NU v Oklahoma Ohio State v USC Monday Minnesota v Oregon St

I'm guessing you're right. It's probably going to be a roller coaster of a weekend on the bump. I like Sears' arm talent, and he's probably had the best combo of arm talent + consistency so far this spring, so I'm not surprised to see him get the Friday role to start out. We need to win that first game against a struggling Baylor program, so I'm sure we'll go all in on Friday, whatever it takes. (Feels weird to type 'struggling Baylor' after how good they always were when we were together in the Big XII.) I also like throwing a change of pace arm (and lefty) like Walsh against Tech - their big bats aren't intimidated by hard throwers, so maybe Walsh can keep them off balance. Plus Tech gets Tennessee Friday night, so they'll see a high MLB draft pick kind of arm in Beam, who's also a righty. Walsh provides the perfect counter to that the next day. And the NU coaches have certainly liked Clark's arm since he arrived on campus. I'm sure he's more prepared for a weekend role now than he was as a true frosh last year. Ultimately, I hope our offense is ready to roll. Probably will be a lot of back and forth in these games.

Well, this is not encouraging. Christo was the #1 guy coming out of fall, but he's not had a good spring, to say the least. Disheartening to have your best arm not be able to throw strikes. Hopefully, he gets straightened out in the bullpen and can be the 4th starter in weekends 2 and 3.

Wow.

World Herald's projected finish (team writeups in the link): https://omaha.com/sports/huskers/baseball/evan-bland-s-preseason-big-ten-baseball-rankings-for-2024/article_1b19c577-8683-5e24-8fc7-e530f7d5cd13.html 1-Iowa 2-Indiana 3-NU 4-Rutgers 5-Michigan 6-Maryland 7-Penn St 8-Illinois 9-Michigan St 10-Ohio St 11-Purdue 12-Minnesota 13-NW Most people have Maryland higher than NU in preseason ratings, but the OWH preview thinks Maryland will struggle with much of last year's power no longer with the team and with a new coach. Hope they're right. (Of course, NU also lost quite a bit of its power, but NU appears to have the players on hand to switch to more of an aggressive base running / higher batting avg team with pop in the middle of the order.) After another coaching change & all of its best players hitting the portal, NW might be worse than it was last year. It's the last season for Minnesota coach Anderson, but they don't appear to be much better than a year ago either.

I didn't like it against NW, as I think it allowed Buie to force us into some switching mismatches and let him get going after we held him down nicely in Lincoln. Mich didn't have anyone like Buie on the floor, and their top guy was a frontcourt player, so it clearly worked better vs Mich. I'd prefer to see us adjust the starters game by game based on the defensive scouting report and who we're facing, but I get the coaches wanting to use the bigger lineup to help us rebound better early in games and set a more physical tone. As long as we can keep turnovers to a minimum with the bigger starting lineup, I think we'll continue to see it.

Wow, still almost a 1/4 chance to get the double-bye. I'm surprised it's that high, but I'll take it. Probably have to go 6-0, though.