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The Mike Anderson era is back

Truehuskerfan

Athletic Director
May 1, 2003
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Up until now, there was at least some consolation that at least we weren't as bad as the Mike Anderson era. That is no longer the case. This is every bit as bad as the Mike Anderson era, if not worse-if that is possible. If Darin Erstad cared about this program, he would turn in his resignation.
 
Up until now, there was at least some consolation that at least we weren't as bad as the Mike Anderson era. That is no longer the case. This is every bit as bad as the Mike Anderson era, if not worse-if that is possible. If Darin Erstad cared about this program, he would turn in his resignation.

I'm sure he cares. He just doesn't have any idea what he's doing or how to run a program. And in reality...it's not his fault Tom Osborne thought it would be a great idea to hire someone who had ZERO experience.
 
I'm sure he cares. He just doesn't have any idea what he's doing or how to run a program. And in reality...it's not his fault Tom Osborne thought it would be a great idea to hire someone who had ZERO experience.

Along with Solich, Pelini, etc. I'm still shocked he didn't give the basketball job to Mikki Moore or Tom Best.
 
This is a case study in why you don't hire former players to run your programs... Because one day your going to have to fire them. Its a bad look all around.
 
Stop it. Mike Anderson took a premier program and turned it into one that couldn't finish better than ninth in a 10-team league three straight years. Darin Erstad took that program and had it in a regional in year three (after missing by an eyelash the year before.)

Assuming no miraculous turnarounds happen in Champaign and/or Minneapolis, this season was a step back. We'll see how this staff learns from it. But please don't compare Erstad to Anderson. At least not yet.
 
The Mike Anderson era is back today. We are getting beat up at home by a team that hasn't won a conference series in over two years and lost 16 straight conference games earlier this season. For that matter, I'm not even sure a Mike Anderson team ever reached that level of futility.

Stop it. Mike Anderson took a premier program and turned it into one that couldn't finish better than ninth in a 10-team league three straight years. Darin Erstad took that program and had it in a regional in year three (after missing by an eyelash the year before.)

Assuming no miraculous turnarounds happen in Champaign and/or Minneapolis, this season was a step back. We'll see how this staff learns from it. But please don't compare Erstad to Anderson. At least not yet.

I'm not sure Erstad would have fared much better those three years we were in the bottom of the league in the Big 12. It's looking like after four years of Erstad ball we can only hang our hats on going 1-2 in a regional to go along with 0 Big Ten titles and 0 conference tournament titles. Any way you slice it and dice it......the Erstad hire has not looked great thus far. And with what we lose this year....I don't have hope that will change under his tutelage anytime soon.
 
Why? Because the players weren't very good? Whose fault is that?


Whose effing fault do you think it is?!! It's the guy who brought the crappy players in to begin with. Not to mention not developing that talent either.
 
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OP is off his rocker... I remember the Mike Anderson era and remember a few seasons that were 50x worse than this one...
Either way...Erstad isn't cutting it. The hire has been a disappointment. And like I said in a different thread...I'm not sure that will change anytime soon.
 
OP is off his rocker... I remember the Mike Anderson era and remember a few seasons that were 50x worse than this one...
For a whole season, sure. But when you consider that this team was expected to make a regional and maybe even host, and that we are probably only going to even get in the B1G tournament by the skin of our teeth and just lost a series at home to the worst team in the conference that had not won a series in the conference in over 2 years and had lost 16 straight conference games at one point this year-that is failure worthy of being compared to Mike Anderson.
 
For a whole season, sure. But when you consider that this team was expected to make a regional and maybe even host, and that we are probably only going to even get in the B1G tournament by the skin of our teeth and just lost a series at home to the worst team in the conference that had not won a series in the conference in over 2 years and had lost 16 straight conference games at one point this year-that is failure worthy of being compared to Mike Anderson.

I agree that the season has been a huge disappointment and has been a massive failure in the last few weeks as the chances of regional are getting slimmer & slimmer by the minute unless we somehow do something miraculous in the last two weeks of the season here, but the pitching has improved vastly and overall record has improved greatly as well as being talked about on a national stage (which we were until the last couple weeks here) is so much better than Anderson era that imo its not even comparable.

I'm not ready to give up on Erstad at this point, there is a lot of young talent on the roster and we've had some good recruiting cycles. I actually think the older bats in the lineup this year have been the issue not coming through ie. Darby, Placek, Headley, Cox and the like. The younger ones show quite a bit of promise so I'm looking forward to the next few seasons with guys like Schreiber, Boldt, Alvarado, Dilday, Schleppenbach etc.... I'm just saying there are younger guys coming in that show promise and I'm not ready to give up on everything and scrap everything again and start over.
 
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The next two years will be the indicator on where this program is heading IMHO. Next year will be almost entirely filled with guys Erstad and crew have recruited and will fit his strategy. The 2015 and 2016 classes will be huge for the future success. We have a lot of good yound arms, and a few good young bats. I see us in the Regionals for the next several years...
 
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The next two years will be the indicator on where this program is heading IMHO. Next year will be almost entirely filled with guys Erstad and crew have recruited and will fit his strategy. The 2015 and 2016 classes will be huge for the future success. We have a lot of good yound arms, and a few good young bats. I see us in the Regionals for the next several years...

Agree. It looks this way to me as well. I have no concerns Erstad will duplicate an Anderson-esque era here at Nebraska. These are two very different people with two very different approaches to their responsibilities. They will produce different results.

I could develop concerns if his growth out of rookie coach status doesn't match his own goals but that's yet to be determined. And the positive results he has produced so far lead me to put any future concerns on hold for a couple more years at least.

Clearly something has gone wrong here in our season's second half and it looks, for all the world, like team mentality. That's the coach's responsibility. Rookie coaches make mistakes and maybe DE has misguided these players offensively and not matched his offense successfully with their skill sets. Over coaching? Misjudged the team's mentality? Out of touch with several individual player's needs from the coaching staff?

Rookie coaches do make mistakes like that.

Erstad is a problem solving type of guy and that leads me to trust him. When he makes public statements, as he does, that these problems have his attention, we fans should give him the benefit of doubt and wait to see how he resolves them.

Perhaps one change that would settle down the villagers, for a while, would be to find a successful offensive coach who could help guide him out of his rookie coach status. Maybe.
 
Finding an offensive coach who is more progressive in his hitting approach than what was taught in the 1980's and succesful players never actual replicated, would be a great start. There's been a huge advancement in technology that allows you to watch film now of what actually happens in a succesful swing. It'd be awesome if Nebraska began teaching those concepts. That, by itself, would raise the potentcy of the offense dramatically.
 
This thread must be a troll. Erstad should be required to revisit his coaching philosophies and strategies, but he's not on the hot seat. There have been major changes to college baseball since he took over, and it's not like he has hired schmucks as assistants. He's got guys who have been successful coaching in the college game. I'm confident DE will be taking a long, hard look at things without having to be told to do so.

The April meltdown is disappointing and a step back, to say the least, but we've been an above average pitching team and a good defensive team. There is something wrong on offense, no doubt, but other than a bunch of guesses and these absurd comparisons to the Anderson era, no one has offered a reason why. I think it's many things, from technology changes to recruiting a certain type of player expecting dead bats/balls, but I'm really not sure anyone knows for certain. I think DE gets a chance to identify that himself before we throw in the towel on him.
 
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I'm sure he cares. He just doesn't have any idea what he's doing or how to run a program. And in reality...it's not his fault Tom Osborne thought it would be a great idea to hire someone who had ZERO experience.

Need more talent. Yea yea yea I know every year guys here tell me talent is not the issue. It is the issue. We don`t have nearly enough talent to compete with the elite teams for a complete season.
 
If the Anderson era was truly back then the players wouldn't know which coach they are going to get when they showed up to the ball field and Erstad would act like a paranoid freak who sent his minions to the board spin what's going on.
 
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RRT I just can't agree with you there...what positions do you feel we have a talent deficiency? Let's talk specifically as hitters, because I think we can all agree that we have a more than capable defense. I'm going to use these in comparison to what we had in 2005, which I think we can all agree was our last Elite team.

C - Significant edge to Lubach in hitting talent
1B - Talent is similar, 2005 had more experience. Buckman/Led were both much more seasoned than Schrieber, however Schrieber is every bit as talented
2B - Talent is similar, Wehrle/Opitz both have a higher long-term upside, but Schleppenbach had a more productive season at the plate
SS - Edge to Simokaitis in production, although no one would argue he was gifted as a hitter. No reason Placzek can't match his plate production. Reveles and Edrington are a step down though
3B - Significant edge to Gordon obviously, but Headley is very capable. Edge is only significant because Gordon was the best player in college baseball
LF - Talent is similar, Alverado is every bit the hitter that Boyer was. Experience edge to Boyer, but even then if Alvarado played every game, I think he'd put up much better numbers. If Meyers was given the at-bats, he'd have put up a real similar year to Bruce as a freshman as well - he's incredibly talented.
CF - Significant edge to Boldt, as he's one of the most gifted players we've had here. Bruce was very good, but Boldt is special
RF - Gerch > Darby over the long haul
DH - Miller is everybit as capable as Bohanon/Fusilier/Buckman

There's a lot of VERY, VERY comparable guys here though in this lineup. You have one all-world hitter in Gordon, and one All-American type in Boldt. So each lineup has a superstar. It's truly not that far off. If you allowed these guys to quit trying to be so flat to the baseball and plane match in their swings, you'd see some immediate results in our "lack of power". The bats handcuffed hitters from hitting 20 bombs in a season, but the philosophy that is taught in Lincoln combined with the new bats just makes it twice as hard.
 
5-12 down the home stretch...if that isn't Andersonesqe I don't know what is. But hey, we finished over .500.
 
Mike Anderson had plenty of late season swoons. This was a continuous swoon from the middle of the season on, capped off by one of the worst end of game collapses we have ever seen. Anybody who says this isn't as bad as anything we saw under Anderson is kidding themselves.
 
Mike Anderson had plenty of late season swoons. This was a continuous swoon from the middle of the season on, capped off by one of the worst end of game collapses we have ever seen. Anybody who says this isn't as bad as anything we saw under Anderson is kidding themselves.
The only difference that I see is that those late season collapses in 2006 & 2008 were from teams that had higher expectations. I never viewed this year's team as anything more than a road regional #3 seed that would likely go 1-2 in a regional. Those collapses hurt more because of the potential of those teams, both were hosts and the '06 team was a Top 8.
 
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