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NU 78 PSU 67

Excellent start and did enough in the final 20 minutes to just keep them at arm's length and give them no hope of a comeback. Did exactly what we needed to do. Time to rest up for a few days and then dig in for a winning stretch run.

I know I'm supposed to hope Wisky wins to help us out, but I just can't do it. I just love watching them get it handed to them. We definitely broke them in the 2nd half in Lincoln. As good as they were before they came to Lincoln, they're equally as bad right now.

Looks like by making use of Memorial Stadium, Den Hartog, and Haymarket Park, NU will have been working out outdoors all 3 weeks ahead of the first game. I can't remember the last time that happened. Den Hartog putting in artificial turf was a big help, and the idea to use Memorial Stadium for some of the early, generalized workouts was a good one. Sounds like the coaches still weren't entirely settled on who the 3 starting pitchers were going to be heading into the scrimmages the past couple of days. We'll see if they name all 3 starters Monday or Tuesday when Bolt meets with the media, or if they go TBA for one or two of them. If I had to guess, I think the coaches will stick with the veterans this first weekend, and it'll be Sears, Walsh, Christo - but they'll all have short leashes. The freshmen and juco newcomers have a lot of talent, but I think we'll let them work out of the 'pen for a bit. With Coach Childress in charge, you better compete and you better throw strikes, or he'll find someone who can. Certainly, Sears & Christo have tons of talent, so I think we want those two guys in the rotation, as long as they can throw strikes consistently. Walsh provides the perfect change-up to those two guys in a weekend series, if it all works out. Now it has to translate to actual game situations and trusting their stuff.

Ha - maybe I should've said "easy to block from my memory and pretend they never happened and focus on the present."

Baseball America Big Ten Projected Standings (2023 records) 1. Iowa (44-16, 15-8) 2. Indiana (43-20, 16-8) 3. Maryland (42-21, 17-7) 4. Nebraska (33-23, 15-9) 5. Rutgers (33-23, 14-10) 6. Michigan (28-28, 13-11) 7. Ohio State (31-25, 9-15) 8. Penn State (25-25, 7-16) 9. Illinois (25-27, 12-12) 10. Michigan State (33-22, 12-12) 11. Minnesota (18-34, 10-14) 12. Purdue (24-29, 11-13) 13. Northwestern (10-40, 4-20) We miss the underlined teams - good news is we get 1, 2, and 3 all at home. I honestly am surprised to see NU this high. BA does a good job tracking all players, though, so they must feel we have some pretty good newcomers. https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2024-big-ten-college-baseball-preview/ ------ BA NCAA Tourney Projection BA projects Iowa to host a regional as the #16 seed. Indiana makes the tourney as a regional (2) seed ... and that's it. Maryland is in the first 4 out - NU not mentioned at all. Other NU opponents projected in the NCAA: K-State (3) seed; Grand Canyon (3) seed (auto bid); Texas Tech (2) seed. Out of the Pac-4 coming next year: UCLA (2) seed; Oregon (3) seed; USC (3) seed. https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2024-preseason-projected-field-of-64/ ----- Also, here's how BA projects our non-con opponents: Baylor - 11th Big XII Texas Tech - 3rd Big XII Oklahoma - 7th Big XII Grand Canyon - 1st WAC Coll of Charleston - 5th Coastal Athletic South Alabama - 7th Sun Belt Wichita St - 9th American Athletic Nicholls - N/A Omaha - N/A N Dakota St - N/A N Mexico St - 9th (last) Conf USA K-State - 5th Big XII bluebirds - N/A Kansas - 8th Big XII S Dakota St - N/A https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/baseball-americas-ultimate-2024-college-baseball-preview/

Gotta be the biggest favorite in a B1G game that we've been by since Fred got here. EDIT: Just did a quick dive - man, it's easy to forget just how bad we were in Fred's first few years. Looks like this is the 5th time we're favored in a league game this season. We were only favored once total in a B1G game in Fred's first 3 years. Last year, we were favored 3 times in league games, all against Minny, with the biggest spread being -7.5, so this -8.5 is the biggest favorite we've been. Good news? We've won outright 4 straight times when we've been favored in a B1G game at home.

NU 80 UM 68 3

I really didn't like the big lineup to start the game, and then when we were switching everything, we were just inviting Buie to get going against bad matchups, and he did. Using the doubles to force the ball out of Buie's hands in the second half worked far better. Disappointing doesn't quite describe last night, but, ultimately, we've done what we needed to do through 24 games to give ourselves a good chance going into the final month. Just need to play far more consistently. Win 5 of these last 7, get one in the B1G tourney, and we're in. It's not going to take something crazy to get 6 more wins. We're still mostly healthy and ready to take advantage of the softer section of our schedule. It's go time now.

Couldn't agree more - I get Trev wanting everyone (except football) to use the iron N ... but he's wrong on this one, because it's butt ugly. Give me the baseball N 100 times out of 100.

Wouldn't surprise me if Gary starts instead of Allick. I think he matches up better defensively on Barnhizer. We definitely didn't have an answer for him the first time around when Gary didn't play. Lawrence was so good on Buie early defensively in the first match, I'm not sure we'd want to make that swap for this game. Of course, Hoiberg & Williams took turns on Buie too, so who knows.

Warren Nolan NU prediction: RPI 72 Record 33-23 SOS 52 Non-con record 21-11 Conference record 12-12 Home 21-6 Road 11-15 Neutral 1-2 https://www.warrennolan.com/baseball/2024/rpi-predict-nitty The site has quad predictions too, but it's still listing the NCAA's old Quad breakouts - here's the conversion to the new breakouts: Quad 1: (0-7) Home games vs. RPI 1-25 -- None neutral site games vs. 1-40 -- Tex Tech (0-1) road games vs. 1-60 -- at Rutgers (0-3), at K-State (0-1), at Wichita (0-2) Quad 2: (8-10) Home games vs. RPI 26-50 -- Maryland (1-2), Indiana (3-0) neutral site games vs. 41-80 -- Oklahoma (0-1) road games vs. 61-120 -- at Mich St (0-3), at Coll of Char (4-0), at Grand Canyon (0-4) Quad 3: (9-5) Home games vs. RPI 51-100 -- K-State (0-1), Nicholls (3-0), Iowa (0-3) neutral site games vs. 81-160 -- Baylor (1-0) road games vs. 121-240 -- at Kansas (0-1), Creigh (2-0), Minny (3-0) Quad 4: (17-0) Home games vs. RPI 101+ -- Ohio St (3-0), Kansas (1-0), South Alabama (3-0), N Dakota St (1-0), Creigh (1-0), S Dakota St (1-0), N Mexico St (3-0), Omaha (1-0) neutral site games vs. 161+ -- None road games vs. 241+ -- N'western (3-0) Yeah, I know the individual games add up to 34-22. The site also lists us at 31-25 in another spot. Like I said, this site never has been all that good at predictive metrics, especially for individual games. Such as, the site has Iowa at 49-5 for the season record prediction with an RPI of 82. Makes no sense. To be fair to Warren Nolan, Iowa plays a T-R-A-S-H non-con and misses Maryland, Indiana, & Mich St in the B1G. (Might as well hand Iowa the regular season trophy now.) So their SOS will be gawd awful. They probably will game the system a bit, as they scheduled Auburn & Georgia in neutral games & Ole Miss for 3 on the road, so Iowa will get an SEC bump from those games, even though they're playing lower-end SEC teams. But at least Warren Nolan gives a starting point at least for the season as a whole. I'll wait for Boyd's World for an accurate prediction, though.

Warren Nolan's predicted B1G finish: https://www.warrennolan.com/baseball/2024/conf-prediction-all 1 Iowa 2 Maryland 3 Indiana & Mich St 5 Rutgers 6 NU & Illinois 8 Ohio St 9 Penn St 10 Michigan 11 Purdue 12 Minny 13 N'western We miss the underlined teams on the schedule. Now, his formula predicts Iowa to go 24-0 and Maryland to go 23-1, so I'm not sure how much stock to put into it. I've never found Warren Nolan's site to be all that good at predictive metrics. But at least it's something. Our non-con opponents' predicted conference finishes: Baylor - 12th Big XII Texas Tech - 3rd Big XII Oklahoma - 7th Big XII Grand Canyon - 1st WAC Coll of Charleston - 5th Coastal Athletic South Alabama - 11th Sun Belt Wichita St - 4th American Athletic Nicholls - 1st Southland Omaha - 4th Summit N Dakota St - 2nd Summit N Mexico St - 9th (last) Conf USA K-State - 6th Big XII bluebirds - 3rd Big East Kansas - 9th Big XII S Dakota St - 3rd Summit If this is remotely accurate, Nicholls should be much improved from a year ago, which would help get them out of Q4. And the Big XII is certainly tough in the top half, but I'd expect K-State to be a bit better than 6th.

Impressive bounce back - they needed that one

The teams we really need to be improved at least a little from last year are Minnesota, N'western & the bluebirds. Playing 9 games against those guys with 8 of them on the road, they don't have to improve much to give us a quad boost. And if Grand Canyon or Coll of Char could be just a little better, they could bump into Q1. Right now, it looks like Iowa, K-State, and Tex Tech are the best teams on the schedule. Also important to remember that road games count as 1.3 in the RPI, while home games count as 0.7, so the tight quad splits make a little sense in that there's already a built-in bonus to playing and winning on the road.

Yeah, it's probably too early to start running projections, but I'm bored tonight. Seeds based on Torvik's predictions for remainder of season: We finish 11-9 in the league in this scenario - with losses at NW, at Indiana & at Ohio St. Minnesota is projected at 9-11 as the #7 seed N'western is projected at 13-7 as the #5 seed So a 2-game gap on either side of us as it stands now. If we could win Wednesday, though, it'd flip us up to the #5 line, assuming all else remains equal. https://bball.notnothing.net/bracket.php?conf=big10m

My gut says 22 wins total after the B1G tourney should be enough. 21 we're probably on the bubble.

Andy Katz is a new believer: POWER 36 29. Nebraska (NR): The Huskers beat Wisconsin in a crazy comeback and then forced Illinois to overtime before falling in Champaign. Top 10 Games this week 8. Nebraska at Northwestern, Wednesday: The Huskers and the Wildcats are nearly mirror images of themselves. They both are coming off missed opportunities. But they are still trending toward being NCAA teams. The Huskers won the first meeting in Lincoln. https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2024-02-05/arizona-cracks-top-5-latest-mens-college-basketball-power-36