Coach happy with recruiting class

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BY CURT McKEEVER / Lincoln Journal Star

Nebraska’s Mike Anderson believes more than just baseball talent will show up in his latest batch of recruits. “I’d categorize this whole thing as a very athletic group,” the Huskers’ fourth-year coach said Friday while announcing a 12-player class made up of 11 high school seniors (including four from Nebraska) and a junior college transfer.

Among the recruits are:

- Outfielder D.J. Belfonte, an all-state baseball and football player from suburban Kansas City, Mo., who was leading top-ranked Rockhurst High in rushing and touchdowns this fall before recently tearing the ACL in a knee.

- Right-handed pitcher Joe Broekemeier of Aurora, who was Class B all-state in basketball and finished fourth in the 200 meters at the state track meet.

- Middle infielder Andy Cotton, a Super-Stater in football and the first NU baseball recruit from Lincoln Southwest.

- Aaron Jarosh, an outfielder from Ankeny, Iowa, state long jump champion and four-year starter in football who was recruited to play that sport at Iowa.

- Brett Sowers, a second baseman from Englewood, Colo., who drew heavy interest from Baylor and Texas A&M.

- Zach McAllister, a right-handed pitcher from Chillicothe, Ill., who was recruited by Arkansas and is likely to see action as a hitter.

Belfonte, also a target of Arkansas, was the first player in NU’s class to tell Anderson he wanted to become a Husker.

“We got an early commitment (in May) from Belfonte, who I think a lot of people would consider one of the best position players in the Midwest, if not the country, and that set the tone for our whole class,” Anderson said. “We recruited around him and had the opportunity to tell a lot of kids we’ve already got Belfonte in this class. That was a huge plus.”

So, too, was the fact Nebraska was coming off a Big 12 Conference championship season that included a school-record 57 wins and its first victory in the College World Series.

Anderson said the difference from this class and last year’s, which he insists was “great” on the heels of NU not making the postseason the year before, was that “there’s more of a willingness (for players) to say ‘yes’ when you’re going to a College World Series team. On the other hand, there’s kids that want to be here, it’s just that you have to prove this is the right program.

“Hopefully, we learned some lessons. After 2001 (NU’s first CWS season), when we went out and recruited, we got a lot of yeses immediately, and we needed to make sure we found the right kids versus yeses, so we were very selective in this (year’s) process. There were a few kids in 2001 that we had to be real careful with, (and this year) we ended up saying no back to some kids after they had already said yes, because they weren’t the right kid.”

Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.