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2022

coolonetoo

Junior
May 12, 2003
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The season is over with 30 losses, sub-.500 conference and non-conference records and not qualifying for the conference tournament held 50 miles from campus. There’s no getting around giving it any grade other than an F. So…what happened?

It would be easy to blame injuries to pitchers and there’s no doubt they were huge. But the staff still finished with the third-best ERA in the league (or, at least, they were in that spot heading into today’s game.)

The offense definitely took a step back. The record in one-run games is well documented but for me the biggest problem was lack of consistency. Nebraska lost four conference series in which the one win was by seven-plus runs. In fact, in all eight conference series featured Nebraska scoring as many or more runs in one game as in the other two combined. And NU was held to three runs or less 20 times in 53 games--and went 1-19 in those games. That’s not going to get it done.

The most disappointing aspect, though, was the defense. It’s truly shocking how bad it was in 2022 after such a stellar 2021. Regressions almost everywhere.

So who/what is to blame for all this? Bad luck? Lack of senior leadership? Rob Childress? I have no idea. I’d love to hear opinions.
 
A little bit of everything is to blame but it was obvious right from the start they didn’t approach the off-season correctly and they lacked talent in key places. Obviously injuries and having a younger roster doesn’t help. I do feel it is very fixable and Bolt will get it done. Player leadership starts in the off-season and that didn’t happen.
 
A thing that has puzzled me all season - during Spring practice Bolt said this team has surprising power and some of it coming from surprising sources. He also said, "There are no easy outs on this team."

Remember, there was good weather and they were outside a lot. Bolt clearly liked what he saw. He even praised the defense.

Well, let me say, there is no universe where I would believe Will Bolt was blowing smoke. Those words are too strong and even the inept Mike Anderson would never say that. Nope, Will Bolt believed those words. But then everything went the other way starting day one and lasted all season.

Very puzzling. His words... the season... total mismatch.

I can only believe that something behind the scenes, a problem that begat other problems then more problems, badly disrupted Bolts plans and frustrated his attempted solutions. And I think, whatever that problem is, Bolt never saw it coming.

I think Bolt has a tough off season ahead of him. But, from my seat in the bleachers, he looks to me like a man who will make good on his off season efforts. I wish him well.
 
On the plus side, nobody in the fanbase will be talking about coach leaving for some vacant SEC job this year 🤣 I think he'll be fine, don't misunderstand me. Maybe having Gomes healthy all year could have flipped a game or two. Or maybe Matthews the prior couple of weeks could have provided a missing spark (credit to Anderson for his fielding though). Doesn't really matter, season over, speculation won't do jack 😉
 
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As far as Bolt's comments, sometimes you can get fooled by internal scrimmages and practice because batters get use to pitchers because they see them so much. It could also be they were swinging for the fences too much when it was live.

I think youth was big in the offensive department. Plus baseball is a weird sport, sometimes players get hot/lucky at different times. Some of last year's seniors had career years.

Pitching-wise I think injuries were an obvious issue. Also, we were deep but our starters&closer weren't as good as last year and that has to figure in.

I agree 100% that defense was the biggest disappointment. I will attribute that to youth and the talent wasn't quite as good.

Next year we will have a whole lot of new faces and we will build on the returners experience. We will see what happens then.
 
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As far as Bolt's comments, sometimes you can get fooled by internal scrimmages and practice because batters get use to pitchers because they see them so much. It could also be they were swinging for the fences too much when it was live.

I think youth was big in the offensive department. Plus baseball is a weird sport, sometimes players get hot/lucky at different times. Some of last year's seniors had career years.

Pitching-wise I think injuries were an obvious issue. Also, we were deep but our starters&closer weren't as good as last year and that has to figure in.

I agree 100% that defense was the biggest disappointment. I will attribute that to youth and the talent wasn't quite as good.

Next year we will have a whole lot of new faces and we will build on the returners experience. We will see what happens then.
I totally agree with the defense being disappointing. That can set the table either way for many games.
 
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