Nebraska...not feeling Frosty anymore

[entropy]

email I got from UNL...

Silva Named Pitching Coach at Nebraska

Nebraska baseball coach Darin Erstad announced the second addition to his coaching staff on Friday, as Ted Silva has been hired as the Huskers’ pitching coach. Silva comes to Lincoln from the West Coast, where he has spent the past four seasons as the pitching coach at UC Irvine and Loyola Marymount.
Silva, a native of Redondo Beach, Calif., and a 1995 All-America pitcher at Cal State Fullerton, helped lead UC Irvine to national prominence from 2008-10 when the Anteaters qualified for three straight NCAA Regionals and won the 2009 Big West Conference title. He moved on to Loyola Marymount under longtime friend and former Titan teammate Jason Gill for the 2011 season.
“I know the University of Nebraska sets the bar with its great tradition, fan support and facilities” said Silva, who was an assistant coach for UC Irvine at the 2008 Lincoln Regional. “Now having the opportunity to come back and work with Coach Erstad is extremely humbling and exciting. I have been fortunate to be a part of some great teams the past few years, and I cannot wait to help this prestigious university. It is an exciting time for the Nebraska baseball program.”
In Silva’s first season as pitching coach, UC Irvine won the 2008 Lincoln Regional, including a 3-2 win over host Nebraska. The Anteaters nearly advanced to the College World Series, but fell one inning short of sweeping No. 2 LSU before the Tigers came back to win the Super Regional. While at UCI, Silva’s pitching unit produced a 3.89 ERA and helped the program to its first Big West Conference championship. The Anteaters qualified for the NCAA Tournament all three years and were eliminated in 2010 by eventual national runner-up UCLA.
“Coach Silva is one of the best in the country,” Erstad said. “He has been a part of many successful teams, and his track record speaks for itself. I wanted to keep an open mind through the search and in the end I knew who I had to go after. I look forward to working with Coach Silva and am extremely excited he is coming to Nebraska.”
Silva took an assistant coaching position at Loyola Marymount under Gill for the 2011 season. The two were teammates on the 1994 Cal State Fullerton squad that finished 47-16 and reached the College World Series. In his only season with the Lions, Silva’s pitchers posted a 3.25 ERA to rank 30th nationally, cutting the team’s ERA nearly in half from 2010 (7.21). A trio of LMU pitchers were selected in the 2011 MLB Draft, including a pair of top-15 round selections in Jason Wheeler (8th round) and Alex Gillingham (11th round). During his first two seasons, Wheeler was 1-4 with a 7.80 ERA before improving to 6-4 with a 3.84 ERA in his junior year under Silva. Gillingham, who earned 2011 first-team All-West Coast Conference honors, saw similar improvement, as he was 6-8 with a 5.51 ERA before producing an 8-4 campaign in 2011 with a 2.49 ERA.
Silva and Gill were on staff at their alma mater in 2005 and 2006 when Silva served as a volunteer assistant coach. The Titans won the Big West Conference championship both years and reached the College World Series in 2006 when CSF produced an NCAA-best 2.73 ERA. Silva helped coach All-Americans and future first-round selections Ricky Romero (2005) and Wes Roemer (2006) to Big West Pitcher of the Year honors. After a year at Fresno State, Silva accepted the UC Irvine pitching coach position and led four Anteater hurlers to a combined 19 All-America awards. Scott Gorgen (2008) and Daniel Bibona (2009-10) collected Big West Pitcher-of-the-Year accolades in his three years at UCI to give Silva a hand in five Big West Conference Pitcher-of-the-Year awards.
During his three seasons at UCI, the Anteaters posted some of the best marks in school history, including the nation’s third-best ERA in 2008 at 3.27, the program’s best since 1974. The same season, UCI struck out a school record 503 hitters. The following year, UCI tied the school record with 20 saves, while the 2010 season saw the Anteaters achieve the league’s second-best totals in ERA (3.98) and strikeouts (483).
Silva spent the 2007 season at Fresno State and helped the Bulldogs to an NCAA Regional appearance. As a team, Fresno State finished with the second-best ERA in the WAC at 4.54, while three Bulldog hurlers ranked in the top 10 individually.
Prior to his coaching days, Silva was a standout pitcher at Cal State Fullerton from 1993-95. A two-time first-team all-conference selection, Silva was 26-7 over his career with a 2.92 ERA and 26 saves, the fourth-most in school history. Silva, who earned 1995 first-team All-America honors, played a key role in the Titans’ run to the national title, including earning the win in the championship game against USC. The 1995 Big West Conference Pitcher of the Year, Silva finished the season as the national leader in victories with a single-season school-record 18 wins (18-1) to go along with six saves. He produced a 2.83 ERA with 142 strikeouts.
As a sophomore, Silva was named a second-team All-American by Collegiate Baseball after he went 4-4 with a 2.29 ERA and 13 saves, the third-most in Titan history. He earned a spot on Team USA following the season.
Silva was selected by the Texas Rangers in the 21st round of the 1995 MLB Draft, the same year Erstad was the No. 1 overall pick by the California Angels. He spent five seasons in the Rangers organization, including one year pitching overseas in Taiwan, while also playing in the independent Atlantic League.
Silva, who also served as an assistant coach at Villa Park High School in 2004, attended Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, Calif., and graduated in 1992.
Coaching Experience
University of Nebraska, Assistant Coach, Present
Loyola Marymount University, Assistant Coach, 2011
UC Irvine, Assistant Coach, 2008-10
Fresno State University, Assistant Coach, 2007
Cal State Fullerton University, Volunteer Assistant Coach, 2005-06
Villa Park High School, Assistant Coach, 2004
Playing Experience
Cal State Fullerton, 1993-95

[entropy]

The Mighty Missouri River defies the Army
By ROBERT KELLEY SCHNEIDERS | Posted: Thursday, June 16, 2011 2:00 am | (9) Comments

In the nearly two-centuries-long interaction between the Missouri and the Army Corps of Engineers, the river has repeatedly defied the Army's attempts at control.

Today, the Army faces the greatest challenge to its regulation of the Mighty Mo. As of June 14, the Fort Peck reservoir was at 114.2 percent of capacity. The lake is so full that water is now flowing through the dam's emergency spillway.

Because the Army does not have the ability to halt the flows through the spillway without threatening the structural integrity of the dam, the dam and reservoir have lost the ability to curtail the Missouri.

For all intents and purposes, the Missouri has defeated Fort Peck Dam. Water is just passing through the reservoir and moving on downstream. But that isn't even the full story.

The Rocky Mountain snowpack in Montana is now beginning to melt in earnest. In places, that snowpack is at 140 percent of normal. All of that melt water is just going to pass through Fort Peck reservoir. Then there is the issue of rainfall. June is the wettest month of the year on the Northern Plains and within Montana. The rains are going to come.

The National Weather Service has predicted above-average rainfall for June in Montana because of the presence of La Nina in the Pacific. As a matter of fact, portions of the Upper Missouri Basin may receive heavy, drenching rains in the next few days. All of that water is going to pass through Fort Peck reservoir.

The next bulwark against the Missouri is Garrison Dam, 70 miles north of Bismarck. Garrison is a colossus. The dam rises 210 feet above the riverbed and stretches a little over two miles long from valley wall to valley wall. Lake Sakakawea's elevation is 1,854 feet above sea level when at full capacity. On June 14, the reservoir level was at 1,853.38 feet. The Missouri is only inches from entering the dam's spillway.

With all the water currently moving through the unregulated Yellowstone (75,000 cfs at Sidney, Mont., near the river's mouth) and the now-moot Fort Peck reservoir (with an inflow of 86,000 cfs into its reservoir), and the water still to come, the Missouri will surely enter Garrison's spillway, defeating the regulatory ability of the second of the Army's large dams.

Below Garrison, the Army built Oahe Dam. At full capacity, Oahe's reservoir has an elevation of 1,620 feet above sea level. At present, the reservoir is at 1,618.58 feet.

If the Missouri goes into Oahe's spillway, the river will have rendered it ineffective in stemming its greatest deluge. Big Bend Dam near Chamberlain has already had water through its spillway. It cannot stop the Missouri.

Fort Randall is the last major Army bastion against the Missouri. There is still almost 12 feet of freeboard in its reservoir (although just last week it had almost 16 feet of freeboard) before the Missouri enters its spillway. If the river goes through its spillway, the lower valley from Yankton south will have no protection from the river. Gavins Point Dam does not have the reservoir capacity to absorb floodwaters emanating out from Fort Randall - it has to immediately release those high flows.

The Army is on the cusp of losing its already tenuous hold on the Missouri. Its military officers and civilian engineers and hydrologists know it. It is why they are feverishly attempting to drain the Dakota reservoirs as quickly as possible.

The problem is that they may be too late. It is already June and the biggest surge of melt water has yet to enter the system.

At this writing, thunderstorms are brewing over parts of Nebraska, Iowa and the Dakotas. The big question is whether the Army's controlled flood, with its 150,000 cfs out of Gavins Point Dam, will be sufficient to drain the reservoirs fast enough and open up storage capacity. If those releases are not enough and the river goes into the emergency spillways of every upstream dam, the lower river will face an uncontrolled flood that may surpass anything in living memory.

Valley residents can only hope that the Army's dominoes hold back the Missouri.

(Robert Kelley Schneiders, Ph.D., is an environmental historian with Eco InTheKnow, LLC, P.O. Box 4393, Boulder, Colo. 80306, ww.ecointheknow.com.)

http://www.bismarcktribune.com/news/...cc4c03286.html

[entropy]

Big ten network on July 1st


12:00PM The Big Ten Welcomes Nebraska
01:00PM The Big Ten's Greatest Games - Football: 1998 Orange Bowl - Nebraska vs. Tennessee
03:00PM It's Crystal Clear - Nebraska 1997 National Championship
04:30PM The Big Ten's Greatest Games - Football: 1995 Orange Bowl - Nebraska vs. Miami
06:30PM Finished Business - Nebraska 1994 National Championship
08:00PM The Big Ten Welcomes Nebraska
09:00PM Decade of Dominance: 1995 Nebraska Football
10:30PM The Big Ten's Greatest Games - Football: 1998 Orange Bowl - Nebraska vs. Tennessee

[Jamie H]

Any news on that troubled nuclear plant in Nebraska? For some reason the national news isn't talking about it.

[entropy]

It is shut down.

[entropy]

By Mike Hlas
Cedar Rapids Gazette

You know us, Nebraska.

Iowa isn’t a vague concept to you like perhaps a Purdue. You don’t need a geography lesson with Iowa like you might with a school called Northwestern, though it’s 483 miles due east of Omaha.

The only thing separating you from Iowa is a river named for neither of us, but rather, Missouri. Which lost to both Nebraska and Iowa in football last season. Whatever happened to Mizzou, anyhoo? Last I heard, it was stranded in the shell of some old conference called the Big 12.

It’s not like you haven’t brought your convoys and caravans into Iowa a time or two. Nebraska and Iowa State were conference partners for more than a century. In fact, you lost what may be the last home game you’ll ever play against the Cyclones, a 9-7 oddity in which you had eight turnovers.

“Fire the turnover coach,” wrote a fellow you know named Shatel. A good line.

But that game isn’t how your football program is regarded in Iowa. To the contrary. The Cornhuskers’ entrance into the Big Ten is being taken truly, deeply, seriously in Hawkeyeland.

A football team that Iowa hasn’t played in 11 years and met just six times in the last six decades is suddenly the top rival of Hawkeye fans. Honestly. Iowa has a century of its own history with Michigan and Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa State, but the game its fans have circled in the brightest red this year is Nov. 25 at Nebraska.

That probably comes from respect more than dislike, though don’t discount the latter. This goes back a long way. While Iowa’s football teams were foot wipes through the 1960s and ’70s, Nebraska’s were heavyweight champions. The Huskers were on television here a couple of times a year. The Hawkeyes were not. You were still a mere one state over from Iowa then, but a million miles apart in football prowess.

While the Huskers had slippage in the last decade and the records of Iowa and Nebraska have been virtually identical in that time, NU still has the history, mythology, and that way-overused word in sports that is respect. Hawkeye fans crave that so-called respect, and never seem to feel they get enough of it. Now here you come into their conference, Huskers, threatening to pose another obstacle toward Iowa getting lavished with recognition by the rest of the planet.

You see how that could ruffle Hawkeye feathers in a hurry. The Iowa teams are called the Hawkeyes, by the way, not the Hawks. Yet, their mascot is Herky the Hawk. Their logo, which can be seen in approximately 16 million locations in Iowa, is called the Tiger Hawk. Their fans cap conversations with “Go Hawks!” in nearly every social situation, including dinner parties, dental appointments, and getting directions from cashiers at Casey’s.

So while the Indianas and Ohio States may view Nebraska’s entrance into the Big Ten as a curiosity from afar — much like Iowans viewed Penn State’s admission to the league two decades ago — this thing is up close and personal with Hawkeye supporters. It definitely would not sit well here if Nebraska started winning Legends Division titles and going to the first Big Ten football championship games while the Hawkeyes sat home. Never mind that most years Michigan and/or Michigan State are likely to have some input on that matter.

Iowa has had plenty of athletic successes. It won an Orange Bowl less than 18 months ago. You surely remember Orange Bowls. But unlike Nebraska, Iowa has known what it’s like to win in the NCAA men’s basketball tourney. It has been to a women’s Final Four. It has the dominant college wrestling team of the past 30 years, one likely to flatten the Huskers year after year.

But while you see all these new, interesting rivalries to be enjoyed in the Big Ten, Hawkeye fans thinking of Nebraska see only the Friday after Thanksgiving. It will be the blackest of black Fridays for many here if Iowa doesn’t come home from Lincoln with a win.

Mike Hlas is a columnist with the Cedar Rapids Gazette and TheGazette.com. He welcomes your comments at his blog, the Hlog at TheGazette.com, where he tackles everything Iowa sports related.

[entropy]

http://huskerextra.com/sports/football/recruiting/article_dbd6f635-d010-53c1-9b59-bbdd296f98a0.html

Another article from the journal star on Delany

[entropy]

I would be lying if I said I wasn't starting to get concerned about Nebraska recruiting this year.

[entropy]

http://my.journalstar.com/post/Husker_Extra_Group/Husker_Extra/blog/dinardo_set_for_football_202_.html

Husker football 202 class

[WM Wolverine]

I'm worried about your ability to continue to recruit Texas, you guys might want to setup shop in Illinois which has a decent amount of 2nd tier talent. There you have to fight against Notre Dame, Wisconsin (whose recently attempted to cling itself to the city of Chicago), Iowa, NW & the Illini. Not to mention Purdue if the guy is an engineering student...

M even has a hard time getting kids from Illinois for awhile now nd its not just ND stealing them away from M...

One of RR's massive failures was his lack of recruiting ties to the midwest, he was even from WV and had very few ties to Ohio even.

[entropy]

I think ours is effort.... Nebraska never had a team of texans

[Wild Hoss]

I think ours is effort.... Nebraska never had a team of texans

Hasn't been more than 5-6 in the two-deep the past few years. We've gotten a bigger impact from our Missouri recruits than Texas.

[entropy]

Problem is Bo doesn't talk to recruiting services so we don't really know who UNL is recruiting... But it seems very quiet and guys who had neb listed high no longer do...

[Wild Hoss]

I am tempted to say this is a sign that he has perhaps mailed it in and plans to be elsewhere in 2012, but this how its been every year he's been here.

One step forward, one step back. The story of Pelini's recruiting. Its going to be his undoing, just like it was for Solich.

[entropy]

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/06/19/travel/06192011OMAHA.html

Nice slide show on omaha