Nebraska Baseball Coaches Think They’ve ‘Turned The Tide’ For The Better With In-State Recruiting
The University of Nebraska baseball team’s recruiting coordinator, Lance Harvell, thinks the Huskers’ coaching staff has “turned the tide” when it comes to nailing down in-state recruits and getting them to come to Lincoln. Harvell’s comments came in an article by Clark Grell of the Lincoln Journal Star on Saturday, talking about how second-year head coach Will Bolt and his staff have ramped up recruiting for the team since their arrival.
When Bolt’s staff first arrived in Lincoln, they made sure to lay out just how important he felt getting Nebraska kids to play for the Huskers was. Harvell went on record saying the group wanted to “put a fence” around the state, in order to metaphorically keep kids from going to other schools. Grell said the coaches have followed through on their words, nabbing quite a few in-state prospects for the 2020 class, in addition to well into the future.
The Huskers have eight Nebraska-based commits in the current recruiting class. The group received a major boost, according to the writer, when Millard West shortstop Max Anderson decommitted from Texas A&M earlier this week and chose the Huskers instead.
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Grell said Nebraska’s 2021 prospects are the “best in recent memory,” and the Cornhuskers already have six commits from that group. Bolt and company also have two scholarship offers out to 2022 recruits and recently secured the commitment of 2023 prospect Tucker Timmerman of Beatrice.
“Looking at certain guys when we got here, we kind of knew, if we get this guy or these guys early on, the dominoes are going to start falling,” Harvell said. “Now, one year later, I think we’ve kind of turned the tide a little bit in-state.”
Grell said Nebraska has long pumped out a healthy dose of high school baseball talent, but coaches told him there has been an uptick in recent years. Elkhorn South coach Brandon Dahl told him that the talent in the state is incredible right now, especially for the 2021 class. Dahl has several high-level college prospects on his team, including 2023’s Cole Easton (a Tennessee commit) and Eli Small (a Kentucky commit).
High school coaches told Grell that players like the fact that Bolt coached at Texas A&M and that knows what it takes to get to the next level. Players are said to also have an interest in banding together and playing with each other after spending their high school careers playing against one another. Bolt and the Nebraska coaching staff are still seeing some in-state prospects leave, but Grell thinks they’ve staunched the bleeding that was going on during the Darin Erstad days.
