Nebraska
Nebraska Baseball Weekend Preview: South Alabama
South Alabama Jaguars (10-3) at Nebraska Cornhuskers (7-3)
Location: Hawks Field at Haymarket Park, Lincoln, NE
Dates: March 8th-10th
Times (all CST): Friday @ 4:05pm, Saturday @ 2:05pm, Sunday @ 12:05pm
Head Coaches: Will Bolt (5th season, 104-78-1) & Mark Calvi (13th season, 377-289)
TV/Stream: B1G+
Radio: Huskers Radio Network, Huskers.com, Huskers App
We continue our tour of the former position coaches from the back to back CWS champion South Carolina by moving from their hitting coach last week at CofC to their pitching coach in Mark Calvi this week at USA.
USA comes to Lincoln to complete the home and home series agreement between the teams, after the Huskers went down to Mobile last season and swept the Jags in dominating fashion by a combined 29-10. Speaking of traveling, this will be the first time USA has left the friendly confines of Stanky Field this season.
The Jags have accumulated a 10-3 record against some, well, lesser competition. Their biggest win of the season thus far came against future Husker opponent Nicholls. They beat the 11-3 colonels 11-10 in 10 innings, doing their best Nebraska impression, scoring 5 runs in the 9th and 10th innings to secure the win.
Pitching Probables
Game 1: RHP Drew Christo (1-0, 3.07 ERA) vs. RHP Carson Swilling (1-1, 3.07 ERA)
Game 2: RHP Brett Sears (1-0, 1.56 ERA) vs. LHP Cam Hill (2-0, 1.13 ERA)
Game 3: LHP Ty Horn (1-0, 1.35 ERA) vs. RHP Cade Carlson (0-1), 6.55 ERA)
A week after recording his first quality start and setting a personal best outing with 6.0 innings pitched at GCU, Drew Christo did the same at CofC. Another new career high 6.2 innings kept the game close enough for the offense to come alive in the 9th. He hasn’t put up the strikeout numbers some may have expected with his available pitches, but the same could have been said for Jace Kaminska last year, and he still formed a pretty good 1-2 punch with Emmitt Olson.
The Brett Sears Express rolls on. The Husker ace struck out 7 and only gave up 2 runs in his 6 innings at College of Charleston last week, with those runs coming off a 2-run home run in the 2nd inning. The late starting NU offense kept him from earning a decision. Despite his red hot start to the season, he’s only 1-0.
Just like last year, the starting pitching after the first two games of the weekend has been a mixed bag. Will Walsh and Caleb Clark have ERAs in the 6.00 range. The on-going search for the 3rd starter now turns to Ty Horn. Horn has made 3 appearances on the season so far, pitching in 6.2 innings, with his longest outing being 3 innings against GCU where he gave up one unearned run. In his last outing against CofC, he allowed 2 runs, 1 earned in 2 innings following Brett Sears. He’s been getting some of the highest praise of the Freshmen pitchers, so its not a surprise that he is the first to earn a chance at locking down the Sunday spot.
USA’s ace Carson Swilling is a Junior transfer from Auburn. He was one of the top relievers for the Tigers his freshman and sophomore years, and is returning to Nebraska for the first time since pitching in the CWS and striking out a pair of Arkansas batters. So far for USA, he’s thrown about 5 innings per start, and about 90-100 pitches. He’s given up 5 runs in his past two games, after shutting out Lamar over 5 innings in his team debut.
Stop me when you’ve hear this before, but Saturday starter Cam Hill is a transfer from Auburn University. The senior played his first 3 years at Auburn, with the first two as a pitcher/DH, and his junior year as strictly a first baseman. He’s done a complete 180 and is now purely a pitcher for the Jags. After a rocky inning in his first start against Southern Indiana, he’s in the midst of a 12 inning shutout streak.
Cade Carlson, the Sunday starter for USA did everything at Tennessee State last season. Carlson led the Southern Conference in ERA last year in conference games with a 2.38 ERA. Towards the end of the season, he was the ace of the staff, tossing a 7 inning shutout in one game and then throwing 8 innings in a 2-1 loss in the SoCon tournament to eventual champion Samford.
South Alabama Scouting Report
The Jags are coming off their worst season under Calvi. After finishing no worse than 6th in the 14 team Sun Belt Conference, they finished 11th last year. They actually weren’t sitting terribly awful with a month left to go in the season, 23-21 overall and 11-10 in conference. Then a 10 game losing streak to end the season happened, highlighted by a series against Coastal Carolina in which USA gave up an average of 13 runs per game, and that just sent the season down the drain.
The top returning hitter, who was the biggest thorn in Nebraska’s side last year is CF Will Turner. He nearly hit for the cycle in the final game of the series last year, falling a home run shy. He finished the year as a 2nd team all Southern Conference, hitting .349 with 9 home runs and 52 RBIs. He’s a little slower out of the gate this season, hitting .256, but has already hit 3 home runs and has walked EIGHTEEN TIMES to push his on-base percentage to an astonishing .469.
They have a freshman off to an incredibly hot start. Right fielder Ethan Melton is leading the team with a .388 batting average, and 1.088 OPS. Not so fun fact, he chose USA over a little school called Nebraska. They also landed an impact transfer in second baseman Brennan Holt. Anytime you can get a dude on your roster that LSU landed out of high school, you take him. Spent a year at Okie State between the two programs after being injured his freshman year at LSU. He is batting .333 and leads the team with 6 doubles and adds 6 steals.
The Jags bullpen had a lot of issues last year, despite restocking with a lot of JUCO players. They do return their closer who is off to an incredibly good start. Grant Wood already has 3 saves on the season, and has struck out 12 batters in 6.2 innings and only given up 1 earned run. They added 2 impact newcomers that are leading their team in appearances in Citadel transfer Gant Starling, and JUCO transfer Logan Wash. Starling has always been a strikeout pitcher, and has 8 in 4.2 innings.
Series History
The Huskers hold a 3-0 record against the Jags, with the sweep by Nebraska in 2023 being their only previous meeting.
Nebraska Notes
- Cayden Brumbaugh experienced an injury to his throwing arm in Charleston, and is expected to not play defense for the next 6 weeks. Nebraska will have to be a little creative with its lineups over the next couple weeks. Bolt specifically mentions Will Jesske potentially playing out of his natural C/3B positions since he has been hitting well.
- Josh Overbeek could return as soon as next weekend against Nichols, after breaking a finger in Arlington, Texas.
- Riley Silva has been a huge boost to the Nebraska offense. He has a .533 on-base percentage on the young season, leading the team. And since sliding into the 2 spot, Silva is batting .417. He also leads the Huskers in runs (13) and stolen bases (9).
- The Huskers are ranked 6th in the nation with 13 sacrifice bunts, led by Silva’s 3. Quite the dichotomy from last year’s school record 97 home runs.
- Nebraska also released their TV schedule for the rest of the year.
Nebraska
Starting fires helped contain a Nebraska wildfire — and ignited another – Flatwater Free Press
This story is made possible through a partnership between Flatwater Free Press and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
As the fast-moving blaze rolled toward Fire Chief Jason Schneider’s district in Cozad, he and his crew faced a literal uphill battle.
The Cottonwood Fire was tearing through the Loess Canyons, an area defined by steep slopes, narrow valleys, few roads and pockets of invasive eastern red cedar trees, which can throw embers and ash — and even explode — when they burn.
“You think you would have it put out, and you keep on moving north, and you’d look back south and it’s just going again behind you,” Schneider said.
But the situation started to improve when they connected with a prescribed burn group. They had equipment and showed Schneider and his volunteer crew how to use fire to contain the wildfire.
“It would have burned a lot more if they hadn’t showed up and helped us get it stopped where we did,” Schneider said.
Already, 2026 has marked Nebraska’s worst year on record for wildfires. As of May 6, wildfires have burned about 981,502 acres and dealt a blow to ranchers. They also have brought to the forefront the best arguments for and against a controversial and centuries-old land-management practice: Using fire to fight fire.
In March, the Cottonwood Fire, contained by prescribed burn techniques and past prescribed fires, made the case for the practice. In the Nebraska National Forest that same month, heavy winds turned the smoldering remnants of a prescribed burn into the Road 203 wildfire, bringing to life some landowners’ and managers’ worst fears.
The debate over prescribed burns had been simmering long before those wildfires and has grown louder in recent years as more Nebraskans turn to the practice. The Nebraska Prescribed Fire Council estimates that during modern times, 2025 saw the most acres burned in a single year by prescribed fire.
But in areas of the state like the western Sandhills, the practice has sparked backlash.
“There was a (prescribed burn) group that tried to establish a couple of years ago up around the Tryon, Mullen area up in there. And they almost lynched that group,” Keystone-Lemoyne Fire and Rescue Chief Ralph Moul said. “They said, ‘No, we do not want fire in the Sandhills,’ because there’s nothing to stop it up here.”
Despite the fear, there is overwhelming evidence that prescribed burns, when done correctly, can help prevent massive wildfires by burning up volatile fuels like cedar trees. They can make the land ecologically healthier and save ranchers money.
“The wildfires you’ve seen here in Nebraska the last few years are also a consequence of removing fire from the landscape,” said Kent Pfeiffer, program manager for the Northern Prairies Land Trust. “You don’t get rid of fire, you just change the nature of it … instead of having frequent, low-intensity fires, you end up with infrequent, high-intensity fires.”
The issue may be growing more urgent as the state faces dual threats. Large swaths of Nebraska’s native grasslands are in danger of becoming cedar woodlands — an already costly headache for ranchers. Meanwhile, climate change is bringing more extreme conditions, including intense stretches of drier and hotter weather that can lead to more destructive wildfires.
Drought conditions and major wildfires
“It’s time to innovate a bit more on the wildfire and prescribed fire side,” said Dirac Twidwell, a rangeland and fire ecologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “What we know is that overall, our fire management is not working.”
‘I burned them’
Tucker Thompson was in his 30s when he first helped out on a prescribed burn on another person’s property near Gothenburg back in the early 2000s. The rancher, who summers cattle in the Loess Canyons, knew some neighbors would be upset, but cedar trees were starting to sprout across his land. He wanted to get ahead of the problem, and he was curious.
By today’s standards, the group’s equipment was basic and their knowledge limited. Even though everything went fine, Thompson left thinking the entire practice was insane. He went home and took a chainsaw to the cedar trees across about 400 acres of his property.
“And then five years later, they all start coming back. Ten years later, it’s like, I have no choice. There’s no way of killing these dang things, so I burned them,” Thompson said.
Now, Thompson continues the practice and is a member of two burn groups. He helped firefighters contain the Cottonwood Fire, even as it ravaged his grazing lands.
Prescribed burns “decrease the fuel load in these canyons, so we can control these fires to some degree,” Thompson said.
The Loess Canyons area has one of the most advanced prescribed fire cultures in the entire country, Twidwell said. It has reduced the risk of catastrophic fire and made the land more suitable for grazing, which has boosted landowners’ profits, he said.
Up until the last 150 years, fire was common in Nebraska. Wildfires would naturally control species like eastern red cedar. Indigenous peoples have also used fire for a variety of reasons in this region.
Prescribed burns are common in other Great Plains states like Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. In Nebraska, it’s more prevalent in the eastern and central parts of the state. The benefits extend beyond fire protection — it also increases biodiversity and wildlife. Even the grass that comes back after a burn is preferred by the cattle.
More than 92,700 acres burned in prescribed fires between Jan. 1 and June 30 last year, according to a survey of 26 organizations by the Nebraska Prescribed Fire Council.
But conducting these burns requires a lot of planning, post-burn monitoring, money, machinery and manpower. And even when it comes together, a change in weather can cancel the whole operation at a moment’s notice.
In order to conduct a land management burn, a landowner or tenant has to apply for a permit and submit a plan to their local fire chief, who decides whether to waive Nebraska’s open burn ban. By law, the plan requires serious documentation, including a list of on-hand equipment and a description of weather conditions needed to burn safely.
Fairbury Fire Chief Judd Stewart’s jurisdiction is filled with landowners and managers who use prescribed burns. Stewart says he had to cancel almost 50 burn permits in March when Gov. Jim Pillen ordered fire chiefs statewide to temporarily stop issuing them during the wildfires. Stewart wishes the governor would have given more consideration to areas like southeast Nebraska, where fire danger was lower. Those areas still have heavy fuel loads, and the window to burn is closing.
“As we approach mid- to late summer, when we start getting high temperatures … that vegetation will carry fire again, and now we’ve got those heavy fuel loads that are going to be hard to contain,” Stewart said.
Austin Klemm, a board member of the burn group that helped Schneider and others contain the Cottonwood Fire, said he is working with about six landowners who have invested roughly $250,000 to $275,000 to plan a burn that might not happen this year due to the ban.
“Some of these guys have invested tens of thousands of dollars in prep work to be able to burn,” Klemm said. “These guys have deferred grazing, did not graze at all last year, had to go find a place to stick cows or feed cows all last year.”
‘It’s dangerous’
Becky Potmesil doesn’t have to look far to see the devastation wildfire can cause. Potmesil raises cattle in the Alliance area of the Panhandle, on the western edge of the Sandhills. To the south, the Morrill Fire burned an estimated 642,000 acres, making it the largest on record in the state’s history. To the southeast, the Ashby Fire burned another 36,000 acres.
The winds have blown away the black, burnt grass, leaving behind only sand dunes. It looks like a moonscape, she said.
Drought conditions in 2026
“Anybody who’d do a prescribed burn out here in the (western) Sandhills in western Nebraska is crazy, and it’s dangerous,” she said. While she sees how there could be benefits in some Sandhills meadows, she doesn’t think it’s worth the risk in her area.
Moul, the Keystone-Lemoyne fire chief, is cautious about issuing burn permits in his Sandhills district. He likes for there to either be snow or green grass on the ground. The Sandhills have fewer fire breaks, less infrastructure and more extreme weather conditions like high-speed winds than other parts of the state, Moul and Potmesil noted.
Moul, an incident commander on the Morrill Fire, understands that prescribed fire has its place. But after seeing the damage caused by prescribed burn escapes over his career, he said fire chiefs shouldn’t allow them on or right before red flag days in their districts. Most of the burn groups know what they’re doing, Moul said, but a few have convinced local fire chiefs to issue permits on red flag days so they can “get the best kill of the trees.”
“But it was my experience when I worked with the state that we went to a lot of escaped fires because of prescribed burns that got away,” Moul said.
The Road 203 wildfire started as a prescribed burn in the Bessey Ranger District of the Nebraska National Forest. More than a day after the fire ignitions ended, heavy winds created a spot fire outside the original boundary as firefighters mopped up and patrolled the area, according to the Forest Service. The agency said 99.84% of its prescribed burns go according to plan. This one didn’t.
According to the Nebraska Prescribed Fire Council’s survey last year, 1.6% of burns escaped and required outside assistance, primarily from volunteer fire departments. Changing weather patterns and the spread of cedar trees are the primary reasons for escapes, the Fire Council said in an email.
“When the gap between prescribed fire acres and fuel load increases, it also increases fire behavior in both prescribed fire and wildfires causing us to adapt to riskier burns with increased planning and equipment.”
When Twidwell came to Nebraska in 2013, he was told prescribed fire would never be used in the Sandhills. Since then, he has seen multiple burns happen there as the culture continues to shift. Some of this is due to the spread of eastern red cedars in the area.
He knows some landowners will never be convinced, and he understands their concern. But beyond protecting the grasslands, Twidwell believes Nebraska needs to have more conversations on how to mitigate large wildfires by using fire.
“Everybody understands … the wildfire risk playing out,” he said. “Fewer understand the benefits and why certain groups are using prescribed fire.”
NCAA Tournament softball returns to Bowlin Stadium this weekend as top-seeded Nebraska prepares to host its first regional since 2013.
The Huskers enter the postseason ranked No. 1 in both the NFCA and USA Softball polls for the first time in program history. Nebraska (46-6) earned the No. 4 overall seed after a historic season that included both the Big Ten regular-season and tournament championships.
Nebraska opens regional play Friday at 5:30 p.m. CT against Summit League champion South Dakota.
“It’s time to funnel it back down,” head coach Rhonda Revelle said. “We had a good day and a half after winning the Big Ten Tournament where the players could enjoy it, but now it’s time to focus.”
The Huskers bring the nation’s longest active winning streak into the tournament at 21 games and have established themselves as one of the country’s most complete teams. Nebraska owns 10 wins over current top-25 opponents this season, including victories over then-No. 1 Texas and Texas Tech.
A major reason for Nebraska’s success has been its pitching staff, led by back-to-back Big Ten Pitcher of the Year Jordy Frahm and freshman standout Alexis Jensen, the conference’s Freshman of the Year.
Frahm, a former national champion at Oklahoma, enters the postseason as one of the nation’s top two-way players, while Jensen leads all freshman pitchers nationally in wins and strikeouts.
“Coach has really emphasized taking it one pitch at a time,” Third Baseman Samantha Bland said. “We’re trying to slow ourselves down and stay in the moment.”
South Dakota enters with a 20-34-1 record but arrives in Lincoln with momentum after capturing the Summit League Tournament title — the first conference championship in program history.
“Forty-eight years and we’d never won a championship of any kind,” South Dakota head coach Robert Wagner said. “To be the first is really special.”
The Coyotes are led offensively by Brooke Carey, sister of Nebraska baseball player Dylan Carey, while Madison Evans has handled the bulk of the pitching duties this season.
On paper, Nebraska holds the advantage in nearly every category, including offense, pitching depth and postseason experience. Still, the Huskers know the NCAA Tournament leaves little room for error.
“Anything can happen,” Revelle said. “The key is mastering the little things and sticking to what got us here.”
Louisville and Grand Canyon will meet in the regional’s opening game Friday at 3 p.m. CT before Nebraska takes the field Friday night in Lincoln.
Nebraska’s new quarterback has high expectations for the upcoming season. Transfer Anthony Colandrea spoke with Pete Nakos of On3 (subscription required) about his decision to transfer and his goals for the Huskers this year.
Colandrea comes to Nebraska following a breakout junior year with the Rebels. The St. Petersburg, Florida, native finished the 2025 season throwing for 3,459 yards, 23 touchdowns, and nine interceptions with a 65.9 completion percentage.
The former Rebels’ play earned him the Mountain West Offensive Player of the Year award. Before UNLV, Colandrea played two seasons at Virginia. In 19 games, he totaled 4,083 passing yards, 26 passing touchdowns and 20 interceptions.
The new Husker told Nakos that he has high expectations and is looking to play in big games at the end of the season.
“Expectations at Nebraska are to win. Like, you’re not here to just not win a national championship. I’m not coming here to just win eight or nine games. I want to win a national championship; I want to go to the playoffs. I have high expectations, and we have high expectations as a team.”
Colandrea joined a Nebraska team that was looking for a new opening day starter after Dylan Raiola transferred to the Oregon Ducks. The Husker quarterback room also includes sophomore and bowl game starter T.J. Lateef and former Virginia quarterback Daniel Kaelin. He also expressed excitement about playing in front of Nebraska fans.
“It’s the craziest fan base I’ve ever been around. My first impression was I went to a wrestling match. I would never think a wrestling match would be sold out. I walk in, and it’s like 35,000 to 40,000 people. I’m like, this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. They bring the juice. I’m excited to play for them.”
Nebraska opens the 2026 season on Saturday, Sept. 5, when the Ohio Bobcats visit Memorial Stadium. Kickoff time and broadcast network are still to be determined.
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