After perhaps one of the strangest seasons Nebraska baseball fans have ever witness, Will Bolt returns for his seventh turn as the head coach for the Nebraska Cornhuskers. After a long trip to the west coast early last season, the Big Red never seemed to find the consistency and success that most observers believed was possible until they once again strung together four straight Incredible wins and a Big Ten tournament championship at The Chuck in Omaha. Can Bolt’s Boys find that consistency this
year for an entire season? Ultimately, that is the question that must be answered.
True baseball fans have to respect that Nebraska seeks to play top level competition to start each season as that is imperative when it comes to positioning themselves for the post-season. Coach Bolt has never shied away from playing the best, yet some have questioned whether or not he’s scheduled too tough at the start and not giving his teams opportunities to get their feet on the ground.
One can say that for younger teams, but when you look at this year’s roster, Bolt has “gotten his team old” with a number of transfers and veteran players that have opted to return. One only needs to look at Fred Hoiberg’s team this season to see the benefits of fielding a team of older players. While it is guaranteed there will be a number of new faces in the lineup, there is a lot of time spent between the baselines.
When a roster is flipped the way that Coach Bolt has done the past few years, it takes a while to figure out what you actually have. That will once again be the case this season. The decisions that the coaching staff makes early in the season will be important, not only about who is on the mound and who is swinging the bats, but also who is going to lead the team on the field. Nebraska has a lot of good guys on the team, but has the coaching staff found those gritty battlers that have been a hallmark of Nebraska baseball? The kind that plays the game the way their coach played when he was wearing the scarlet and cream.
The on-field coaching staff will start their third season together when the curtain drops on the season in Arizona. In fact, there is only one new member of the staff this season, Kyle Nicholson, the Director of Player Development. The rest are very familiar with each other, which should pay dividends.
Whose Here? Whose Not?
Gone: Derek Roy, Cole Evans
New: Kyle Nicholson
Back: Will Bolt, Rob Childress, Lance Harvell, Mike Sirianni, Connor Behrens
Pretty Much the Same Old Same Old
The only change on the staff this season comes on the support staff where Kyle Nicholson arrives to replace Derek Roy, who served in that role for the 2025 season. One would expect that the new Director of Player of Development will provide particular support for Coach Childress and the pitching staff after serving as the pitching coach at Mercyhurst last year, and for three seasons before that at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Nicholson has D1 experience having pitched at Texas A&M for four seasons and then serving as a graduate assistant for the Aggies.
All Around Me Are Familiar Faces
Is the third time a charm? The 2026 baseball season is the third with this same staff in charge of leading the Cornhuskers. This consistency will hopefully prove beneficial with the latest edition of Nebraska Baseball. Though the same staff is in place, as happened last season, some of the responsibilities have changed.
Will Bolt is back at the helm for his seventh season leading the Cornhuskers. Coming off a second straight run to the Big Ten Tournament championship, the Conroe, Texas native holds a 170-126-1 record. Finishing the conference regular season at 15-15, the Cornhuskers fought off self-inflicted wounds the entire season to finish 8th in the final standings before winning four straight in Omaha, including taking out regular season champ Oregon in the semi-finals before dispatching the second place UCLA in the championship game. Bolt and the Cornhuskers have the secret sauce when it comes to the post-season in Omaha.
Trusted assistant Lance Harvell, who joined Bolt seven seasons ago, is back and will return to the third base coaching box after being across the diamond last year. One would think that a more aggressive approach on the bases will return. Bolt will continue to call the offense after he took over midway through last season, but one would expect Harvell to establish his presence early on. He will continue to coach the outfielders and serve as the recruiting coordinator.
Rob Childress is in the third year of his second time around with the Cornhuskers. After losing the team’s top starter in the first couple of weeks of the season and perhaps his top arm out of the bullpen shortly after that, the respected coach was able to patch together a pitching staff that for the most part was able to keep the team in most games. Unfortunately, they often did not get enough offensive support to result in wins. There will be a number of pitchers who have worked under Childress for more than a year or two that will be expected to step up this season.
Iowa native, Mike Sirianni, is in his third year with Nebraska after assisting at Wichita State. He will once again be the primary hitting coach and coach the infielders. This season he is headed back to the first base box where he started out in his first season on the staff. The former Creighton Bluejay is also an important figure in recruiting.
Conner Behrens is in his third season as Director of Operations and has various on-field responsibilities including working with catchers, hitters, and outfielders. Garrett Plumlee is back as the strength coach and new comer Kyle Nicholson, will be the Director of Player Personnel and most likely will provide a little assistance to Coach Childress with the pitchers.
Season Outlook
After the past couple of seasons, most local observers don’t know what to expect out of the 2026 Cornhusker baseball team. One of the most respected journalists that exclusively covers college baseball, Kendall Rodgers of D1 Baseball has stated that this may be Coach Bolt’s best team in his tenure at Nebraska, yet unlike last year, he does not have them in his preseason top 25. It would appear that he has the same attitude as most Nebraska fans: show me.
Coach Bolt and his staff have once again flipped about half the roster, which is where college sports are at this point in time. Though a couple of D1 pitchers arrived through the portal, some wondered why the staff wasn’t a little more aggressive with the SEC fire sale, but as the start of the season approaches, they express confidence in the experience they have returning, particularly in the infield.
Coach Bolt stressed that a priority was to develop a tight-knit team with strong chemistry, and he believes that this will be the case this season. He noted in a recent press conference that winning chemistry did not exist last year and that may well have had a huge impact on the construction of the roster.
Once again, the Big Red will open the season with four games in Arizona against four teams that typically find themselves in the NCAA regional tournament. UConn, Northeastern, Grand Canyon, and Stanford will provide a very stiff challenge, before the boy’s head back to Arlington, Texas the following weekend to face Louisville, Kansas State, and Florida State. To finish off the first three weekends is a trip to Auburn. This may be an even more formidable schedule than what they faced a year ago. The team will be battle-tested right away and with a little luck will be healthy when they start playing at Haymarket Park and tackle the Big Ten teams.
