Husker baseball team ready for whatever the schedule, whenever it comes out, presents in 2021 | Baseball

The Division I college baseball season starts Feb. 19.

Nebraska very likely won’t play baseball on that day, or the day after that, or the day after that. In fact, the Huskers and their Big Ten brethren may not suit up until the calendar flips to March. 

It’s widely expected the Big Ten will adopt a conference-only schedule for baseball, as it did for football and volleyball. NU athletic director Bill Moos said as much earlier in the week during his appearance on the “Sports Nightly” radio show, when he revealed the slate likely will include 44 games and four-game weekend series.

Since the weather in Big Ten country in February isn’t exactly conducive to playing baseball, there’s a good chance the season starts in March. Then it becomes a sprint to May and a race against Mother Nature and COVID-19 to try and get a somewhat normal season on the books.

And while just about anything will be an improvement over the 15 games the Huskers played last season, the inability to play games outside of the league could put schools such as NU in a tough spot when it comes time to decide NCAA Tournament teams in May.

“Obviously we want to have as many games as possible, bottom line. With having missed the majority of our season last year, we want to have as many games as possible this year,” NU coach Will Bolt told the Journal Star. “But what I’ve told our team is, whatever’s decided, all of our goals are still going to be there in front of us. Whether it’s conference-only, nonconference, how many it is. Our goals that we want to set out to achieve, the one thing we can control is how we perform.