Nebraska Cornhuskers News: Dylan Raiola in town, baseball’s big night, more

The Nebraska Cornhuskers baseball team had itself quite a big Friday night. First of all, Will Bolt’s squad managed to topple Illinois 8-4 in the Huskers’ Big Ten Conference opener. Considering how up and down the season has been so far, it will be important for the Huskers to win as many conference games as possible. It’s hard to tell where their RPI will have them when the regular season dust settles.

Of course, the Huskers’ win was big but there was another reasons why the baseball team was getting a ton of attention. Actually there were more than a few reasons. There was also the fact that Dylan Raiola and several other top Nebraska Cornhuskers football recruits were in attendance.

Interestingly enough, Matt Rhule’s approach to getting Raiola here seems to be to show him that football isn’t the only game in town. The last time the 5-star quarterback was in Lincoln, he took in a Nebraska basketball game.

On Friday he not only watched the Huskers beat the Fighting Illini, he also helped lead a “Go Big Red” chant that many, many Nebraska Cornhuskers fans managed to capture and share on social media. That chant has people once again hopeful that he might leave Lincoln committing to the Huskers.

Other Nebraska Cornhuskers news

• There was yet another reason why the night was big for the Nebraska baseball team. The program also retired numbers for the first time ever. And the numbers they picked were certainly the right ones. Alex Gordon, Shane Komine and Darin Erstad all had their numbers retired. Three of the best Nebraska baseball players ever returned to hang together for the event.

• The Nebraska softball team also kicked off its Big Ten conference schedule. The Nebraska Cornhuskers managed to continue what has been a heck of a season with a 9-7 win over Purdue to improve to 21-9 overall.

Other sports news

• Creighton has made the Elite Eight for the first time in almost 100 years. Yuck. They beat 15th seed Princeton to get there. The debate for weeks has been whether Nebraska Cornhuskers fans should be rooting for the Bluejays. I can’t. I won’t.
• With no number-one seeds still alive in the tournament UCONN is now the favorite. That would be better than Creighton winning it all though right?
• The Cincinnati Bengals still might be going after former Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott and they might now be the only suitor. Former Nebraska Cornhuskers star Zac Taylor might be getting a new running back to add to his offense.