The regular season was disappointing, thats just a fact. At the end of the day though they won the Big 10 tournament and went to the regionals. So season is a wash for me.I'm guilty of this. I recognize the BIG 10 prior to the additions of the West Coast teams was not a great or even a good baseball conference. However, seeing Nebraska with an average conference regular season finish of 5th isn't what I would call successful, especially after regularly dropping series to bottom feeders.
The other piece is seeing local talent leave the state. @PonyBoy had a post earlier in this thread where he dropped some knowledge about how far Nebraska is behind in spending and facilities which came as a surprise to me. Admittedly, I should be more frustrated with the AD rather than Bolt.
Is it as simple as stating the AD needs to give the elite local talent more of a reason to stay home?
As for the Big Ten Era, I really don't think Nebraska has been that bad. They haven't dominated, but they've been consistently good. Its just unfortunate that they have had a lot of 2nd place finishes.
2 - Big Ten regular season titles - 2017, 2021
2 - Big Ten conference titles - 2024, 2025
4 - 2nd place Big Ten regular seasons - 2013, 2014, 2016, 2024
3 - 2nd place Big Ten tournament finishes - 2013, 2014, 2019
That's 11 potential titles, but they only got 4. I still think Nebraska could have been a little bit better, but I think they were pretty close to the ceiling of a Big Ten baseall program before the West Coast teams were added. That said, I do think Nebraska has a higher ceiling available in the new Big Ten with the West Coast teams.