Is it too soon to tell what next season’s roster will look like? Is there talent retuning or are the top guys mostly transfers with one year of eligibility? Based on the recent success, I fully expect another solid haul from the portal if that’s the route they need to take.
Jack Lausch - NU Diamond Thread
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Is it too soon to tell what next season’s roster will look like? Is there talent retuning or are the top guys mostly transfers with one year of eligibility? Based on the recent success, I fully expect another solid haul from the portal if that’s the route they need to take.
In college sports, it's way too soon, yes. Probably too sign until winter break next year. In theory, they should have a nice group returning. But they lose their only two arms that are competing with upper level Big Ten bats right now. The younger guys have shown flashes of doing that, so hopefully an extra year allows them to do so. Position player talent for sure, assuming they are all back.
Keep in mind, another 7 game improvement would represent their most wins in 30 years (the 1995 squad won 36). They were poised to make that type of improvement after 2022, but then Coach Allen left, the portal destroyed maybe our most talented nucleus ever, and the Coach shenanigans that made our program the laughingstock of P5, if not all of D1.
The portal will be key to our continued development. The good news is that Ben Greenspan has our program in an upper trajectory. After our improvement this season, his sales proposition in the portal becomes much stronger than last year where he was selling “belief without evidence”.
The improvement this year is especially impressive because the team lost their #2 starter Garrett Shearer after two starts (in which he dominated and went 2-0). I assume he suffered a season-ending injury but haven’t seen confirmation of that.
A healthy Shearer would have been a huge help in the second game of each weekend series, because there has been such a drop off after Hliboki. And having a stud starting the second game would have allowed Greenspan to be more creative in the third game. So I think losing Shearer was a big deal that cost the team a number of wins.
A healthy Shearer would have been a huge help in the second game of each weekend series, because there has been such a drop off after Hliboki. And having a stud starting the second game would have allowed Greenspan to be more creative in the third game. So I think losing Shearer was a big deal that cost the team a number of wins.
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Great point. I had forgotten all about Shearer. The fact they’ve done all this without him makes their accomplishments even more impressive. Hopefully he’s rehabbing and will return healthy for next season.
Well today made me hate the Gophers that much more. Not because they couldn't pull off the win over Sparty. They're awful and the fact they won the series and beat maybe the best pitcher in the conference in Game 1 was amazing. But because they played with our emotions in doing so. Falling way behind and then rallying to take the lead into the B9, then falling apart .... ugh, so close.
2 of 3 vs UCLA IN UCLA would be pretty miraculous. Infinitely more miraculous than the softball team doing so a few weeks ago (Hliboki can't do a Boyd and start Games 1 and 3). Regardless of how this ends up, thank you to Coach Greenspan and the guys on this year's team for making baseball matter again at Northwestern, and showing that this IS a program worth keeping. (That was the minority opinion just a couple painful years ago).
2 of 3 vs UCLA IN UCLA would be pretty miraculous. Infinitely more miraculous than the softball team doing so a few weeks ago (Hliboki can't do a Boyd and start Games 1 and 3). Regardless of how this ends up, thank you to Coach Greenspan and the guys on this year's team for making baseball matter again at Northwestern, and showing that this IS a program worth keeping. (That was the minority opinion just a couple painful years ago).
This is 100 percent absolutely true. Probably the difference in making/missing the BTT. True freshmen played a MUCH bigger role in the weekend rotation than ideal, which also left us painfully thin in midweeks. Some of the final stats may look ugly, but honestly, most of them had a lot to build on. They're just likely going on fumes at this point. I mean, think about how few TRUE freshmen are asked to play major roles at the P5 level. There's a reason for that.
Now ALL teams have pitching injuries -- the problem is, we just don't have that depth yet that other teams have. But if Coach stays, I think we can get there.
Hopefully this is a trend, it's good to see NU baseball with a chance to be actually competitive and respectable!
The good news is that Kucherak is just a Sophamore. In fact, 24 of the 35 roster players could return next year, including Liolios and Lausch. Assuming Greenspan can scrape up some NIL $$$ to retain key players and can fill a couple of holes with Grad transfers the Cats could be decent next year.
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