1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Lance Harvell-Nebraska Baseball Assistant Coach: November 7th, 11:00am

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Lance Harvell-Nebraska Baseball Assistant CoachAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Fridays we're going to try to get this guy around as much as possible except for when they're traveling. But that's okay. We're going to bug him anyway. Lance Harvill, Husker baseball, coach, what's happening with you? You're right. This weather, this is what I signed up for. When I moved up here seven years ago from Texas, I was like, all right, bring on that fall weather. I'm here for it. This is, uh, yeah, this is great. Baseball weather, absolutely. Right? Right. That's the time. But here's the thing that, that, that let the folks know where's home. Like, where are you from?

Because it, it is such a part of who you are and your personality that it just pops up all the time and that I'm fascinating. Yeah, I wish, I wish I could say one specific place because Texas is home, but I've lived all over that state. I actually, I grew up in Round Rock,

which is just north of Austin. Another great baseball town. Baseball town, for sure. Moved to Houston when I was like 10. So the majority of my life, I've lived in the Houston area, but my parents, both born and raised in College Station, we moved back to College Station when I was in high school. And so they're still there now.

And I would say short answer, college station is home, but I've probably lived most of my life in Texas in the Houston area. What are the core values? What are the core values of that space and that family? Humble and hard working, you know, don't ask how hard, how hard the work is or how long it's going to take. Just get it done. That's kind of the core value me growing up.

I was just talking to somebody about this just the other day because I've got my 10-year-old son, my oldest. He doesn't know this yet. And I don't think he's listening. He shouldn't be because he's in school right now. So I won't burst his bubble here. But we got him. He's moving now into the territory of yard work. And we got him for Christmas, a mower and a weed eater and all.

So he's he's moving into that realm and he's going to learn those. The tricks of the trade and the, yeah, what we're all about. That, you know, that's so good. That's so good. And it's funny because you think about it now when you first got here. So he's 10 now. Yeah. Like that's crazy biz.

He was three. He was three. That is crazy biz. It was funny too because, again, my time before Lincoln was in the Woodlands, Texas. so north, just north of Houston. And some of the kids that I coached that John Cooper ended up playing for Coach Harvel and Coach Bolt. And it's funny, too, that as they start to tell stories,

your reputation as a recruiter is profound because there are kids that played for me in the woodlands who didn't sign with Nebraska or didn't sign with Sam Houston State. But they talk about, you know what, Harville's a dude. And when they caught that code word in baseball speak. Yeah. All encompassing.

You're a dude. And if you know, you know. He's a dude that he. So the importance of recruiting in today's game is vital. And for those that don't follow Harvel on social media, there's, there's a meme he uses. That is, that is the, the bat signal to a great recruiting trip. Explain that to folks. Yeah.

The gift is the dude, right, from the Big Lobowski, which is my all-time favorite movie. And it's to give him in the movie. If you know the movie, he's celebrating because his car got stolen and they found it and he's got his car back. So he's celebrating and he's banging on the roof of his car while he's jamming credence. And so whenever in Recruit, when we get a commitment, when we get a dude, the Twitterverse gets the dude. I guess it's X now, but the people get the dude. When the Oscars get a dude, you get a dude. And so it's kind of taken on a little life of its own, I guess, a little bit.

People figured out real quick. They put two and two together on what it means. And it was just a, I don't know, probably 10 years ago maybe. That kind of became a thing with coaches. When you get a commitment, you put out, you know, something like that. And it just kind of became a thing. And I've got a bunch of coaching buddies across the country that, you know, they see it. And more so than the engagement on.

on social media or the text, the follow-up text that I get from like, who'd, all right, who'd you guys get? Who do I need to race off the board? You know, you're killing me with this. And there's been some, there's been some dude heaters over, over the years where it's been, you know, four, four guys in three days or two, you know, two guys in one day, whatever. And so it's, yeah, it's kind of, it's just a fun little thing. And I'm a, I am a huge, big Lubowski fan.

And so I just kind of, it kind of, it kind of, meshes with my personality too let let's go through that because harvall's dudeness is profound so we have to go through we have to go through some of his heroes uh and so if big lobowski's at the at the at the tip of the pyramid for great movies for you are we talking about just movies yeah okay just movies for the ones that when they when they when they're on stop and watch yep yep um 10 cup is another one um that movie might embody not only my humor but also my my personality

like on the on the field kind of the uh yeah riverboat gambler gun slinger type like um you know when in doubt be aggressive and go for it man I'm and I'm thinking about movies growing up that I just I mean I had I had a F-14 Tomcat you know poster on my wall because I loved

top gun so much and and so again maverick kind of that that little bit of a loose canon uh you're so texin you're so texed it's just it's funny it's funny go ahead keep going oh man um hmm you put me on the spot here this is this is a this is a good one i got so many running through my i'm pretty sure your your wife would have the list lined up while while i'm watching some 10 year old kid in a Hawaiian shirt down, uh, strut down, O street right here. This is the best part. Coach.

I totally. If I had any, any train of thought right now, I just lost it. Peacocking down O Street with his mom. I'm going to Hawaiian shirt in November and downtown Lincoln. Like, it's the best part. What a spot. It's the best part. This is great people watching spot right here.

Um, let me just, I'll go, I'll go those, maybe those, those three. Uh, that's, that's a pretty solid group right there. I've tried to, another one all. I've tried to introduce. to North Dallas 40. And to explain the greatness of that era, that and Brian's song were side by side as, and then, you know, Bert Reynolds' longest yard.

Those were the football movies. So I know that you, as an athlete, you were all over the place. And in Texas, football has to be a part of your life. What did you play? I was a quarterback in high school. I was a catcher by trade, quarterback in football, and I like the ball being in my hands.

I like knowing it was coming to me on every play. Oh, here we go, Crash Davis. Since you're talking about movies, Crash Davis would be another one for sure. My junior college coach actually called me Crash. Some of the hijinks we would pull back then that you can't get away with now. But there's my other fourth member Mount Rush more than. It's it's the,

Chris Davis gave the best example of the actual conversations that go on in the minds of, of a baseball player. No doubt. Like that's why that movie is what it was. That and I mean, it is, it's more authentic than,

then I think that people realize and they just probably think they're watching a movie and, you know, there's stuff that happens in that movie. You know, that baseball players, you're on this side of it or coaches, uh,

will be dying laughing at or referencing or whatever. it's it's the most nuanced thing but if if you don't know you don't know and just and there's there's so many good pieces of that movie uh that that kind of capture what it's like and it's it's kind of like same same deal as the big lobowski i could every time i watch that movie i pick up on something else that's that's funny and you just sit there and watch you like this is brilliant i'm a member of that like i bring it into box sometimes and sometimes the generational divide shows up and i have to go back and kind of refer to them. Bach, let's bring you in, man.

What's your Mount Rushmore? What are you doing when it comes to movies? Probably start with dumb and dumber. I watch that. Enough. You know what? Game set match. That literally told me everything that

totally redeem yourself. That says everything. I don't even know why we have to, we don't even have to have anymore. That is spectacular, but keep going. Oh, my goodness. Well, and so that's like kind of my mayor of comedy at least.

So, you know, the Tommy Boys, those sort of stuff would probably be good. I like, I like scary movies or, you know, frightening movies, especially, horror movies. So I like The Witch, if you ever watch that one, my favorite one. You are. Okay. So, Coach, Bach is the guy that when he goes to WWE, he roots for the bad guy. Okay.

He's the heel. Yes, that's right. Actually, I like your style on that. Yeah, you know, I just said you. This is why I connected it because I immediately thought Harvel's not going to root. There's certain guys he's not going to root for it. Right? Because it's too pretty, too easy.

It's not gritty enough. Harvil, wait a minute. Where's the word? I like non-tradit. Speaking of movies, okay, and I like non-traditional movie. I like, I like where the bad guy wins. Yeah. You know, like the departed, like those.

Now, the bad guy doesn't ultimately win, but like just non-traditional, you know, good guy rides off into the sunset. I'm like, eh, that's kind of boring. Like, let's listen. Let's throw some twists in here. Get a little dirt on it. Yeah. Put a little dirt.

Rub a little dirt on it. That is a Texas thing. I want to be rooting for the bad guy and then halfway through the movie. It's like Breaking Bad. We've switched to switch gears to TV shows. Breaking Bad is so good. You know, peeky blinders is so good because you're rooting for the, and in any other sense, you're like, wait, this is bad guy.

And like, well, I like this guy. But this is the personality profile that happens when coaches come in. Jalen Reyes is. is the same way, right? That he requires a little bite to whatever he's consuming. Peter Colbert, you would think for a tennis player, you know, boogey. No,

no, no. He's like, no, no, I'll fight you. Like, really, yes, they come. Right? So it's the thing. We're talking to Husker baseball system, Lance Harvel, and a part of why I wanted to bring him in on a regular basis, one, he's just a good dude. But two, the insight, we were on the sideline before a Husker football game.

I want to say it was Northwestern. And before the game, he's in mid-recruiting process, right? He's got a train of people behind him. He stops, we back pat, shake palms. And he looks at me and he goes, yeah, 2817. I'm feeling this one. I was like, really? He goes, yeah, 28.

It's 2717. It's the final score. 28, 21. Do I look at him roll. 27, 21. Right? And he calls it. I'm just going, this guy.

This guy, like, why are, Bach, why are we spending hours in the lab looking at film, looking at analytics? And here's Coach Harvall going, nah, here's what it is. You can be on your way. Well done. I had my finger on the pulse of that. Not only on the score, but I said, this one's going to be a tougher fought game than what we maybe want to want to admit to.

This is going to be a dog fight, but we just need to win. That's what we need to. We need to get that taste out of her mouth from, uh, from that Minnesota game. We just need to win. Yeah, just to watch the process. And again, the recruiting process and how you handle it, the way the young men that marched behind you in that space look at you

because there's a respecting that happens. And then I think there's a part of it that gets missed is that in the transfer reporter era, how you recruit the people you don't get? You never burn a bridge. And it's just, And maybe going back to your point, you know, whereas before some of your former players or guys that you knew that maybe we recruited, you know, a decade ago. Yep.

You just, you treat people the right way. There's no, there's no secret to it or special sauce there. You just, the recruiting process, you just got to be honest with them. And, you know, that's what I think kids respond to. I think that's what their parents respond to. They're always, they know where they stand. When we're recruiting them, we're not, we don't, you know, play word games with them. We tell them exactly what it's what it's like.

We show them the depth chart. We show them the daily routine of what it's going to be. And we don't mince words. And we flat out tell guys, really the recruiting process for us once we get a guy on campus. And we sit down in that in that office and we're talking to him. It becomes less about, all right, how can we, you know, sweeten this deal or put a, you know, shiny bow on everything. it is we're going to try to scare you away. And it's,

we're going to tell you exactly how hard it's going to be and how demanding we're going to be, how we're going to coach you and all that. And we would rather know now if it's too much for you as opposed to, all right, we tell you all this good stuff and how good you are and how, you know, awesome everything's going to be once you're here.

And then two months in, you realize it's not that way and you, you know, you end up, we just, we don't get the player that, that we need and you're not, you're not happy we're not it doesn't work out for anybody to do that so the the recruiting process is

very very blunt uh blunt those conversations are very blunt um and it is we're going to try to scare you away and what i've kind of found um over the years when when you do that it's it is a it's a pretty it becomes a pretty black and white process because you can you can look across that desk and see in a kid's eyes you can see his body language when you're talking about all this stuff and the guys that kind of perk up a little bit and that are locked in on you, you know, with the eye contact and everything, you know, they got maybe a little forward lean in their chair. Like, you start talking about that, that stuff and you get that reaction from those guys,

you know, you got the right guy. And the guys that kind of, you know, you lose their eye contact or they kind of slump back in their chair, they're looking all around the room. Those are the guys that are going to be, you know, maybe want it a little bit easier than what they're going to get here. I always think it's funny, too, I talk about, showing the guys the depth chart and everything or talking about the debt chart. I've got my, you know, huge whiteboard, dry race board that I have every from transfer portal guys to junior

college, I mean, every list from every class and the prospects, you know, that we have that we're looking at and watching, watching guys and their parents when they come in the office sit down and they are locked in on that board looking at it. And it's, you know, and that's kind of, I'll point it out. And I'll just say, I see you looking at the board. What, you know, anybody on that board, you know, whatever? And I'm like, if you're afraid of competition, this ain't the place for you. If you think you're the only guy in your position that we're recruiting, this is not going to be the place for you because it is going to be hard-nosed. It is going to be tough while you're here because we want to be good.

And then I point on the exact opposite wall after I tell them how hard it's going to be when they're here, on the exact opposite wall from that dry race board and everything else, there's two pictures from the last two years of our dog pile in the Big Ten tournament. I said, well, that's what you get, though. And there's going to be more of that. and I can point them, you know, to the, to my cabinets and my shelves that is right behind them, that they never even, when they walked in the office, they never even looked at. And there's sign baseballs and baseball cards and bats and everything else from former players

that are in professional baseball or team USA guys or they're in the big leagues right now. And it's like, it's worth it. It's not going to be easy, but it's going to be worth it. And, you know, it's that's what the whole process essentially boils. boils down to because I mean my my mom can go sit at a game and and tell me who the best two players on the field were you know like the talent part of it like that's that's almost the easiest thing to spot it's the intangibles that you got to have kind of a keen eye and like you said with this era of the transfer portal and all that that's tough to do when the summer rolls around and and now it's

I mean you talk about life in the fast lane the transfer portal is the HOV lane I mean it's the auto bond of recruiting because those that whole process gets shrunk down to maybe a matter of two days. And it's as soon as they pop in there, you're trying to do as much research and find as much information on as you can have a conversation with them. And you're trying to dissect all this stuff that we just talked about when you're actually sitting down in the office with the guys. I mean, you've had multiple conversations with them leading up to that point. The transfer portal, those weeks or months that that process takes,

get shrunk down to maybe two or three days. And you might have two or three conversations with a kid on the phone, but you're looking up information and watching video and trying to filter through some metrics and stuff and make a decision. And most of those guys don't even need or want to come on campus. Everything is done over the phone. And as soon as you're off with one guy, I mean, there's five more that pop up in the portal right after him.

And you're going, all right, which one of these guys is the right fit for us. And it's not an exact science by any means as much as we try to make it that. But it's it's highly competitive. And it's a tough tougher process, that's for sure. From the Husker baseball program, Lance Harvill, it would appear that you and Coach Bolton, this staff have a pretty good idea about what a Husker baseball player is internal. And I think that's much more important than actual talent. And as you talk about the decision making and the frustration,

Is that the bigger part of recruiting for you now is identifying in the wave of people? Because you're going to have people who reach out to you because they're not happy with where they are. And then it's the people you pursue because you think they fit. Right. That's the million dollar question is just the is the fit. And again, we can look up stats and metrics and go put in, you know, there's websites you can go just plug in the information and then see all right who's in the portal that fits what we're looking for from a physical standpoint tool standpoint production standpoint

but having those conversations on the phone or if you actually do get a kid to campus that's that's usually kind of the the make or break moment for them and for us you know trying to find out we're bringing somebody into a a championship team already is it going to be a culture fit and and so again kind of going back to that's why we have those blunt conversations once we're when we're with them or on the phone of just telling them, look, this is how it is, man. Like it does us no good to mince words, you know, there. But that, that is the, that's the toughest part is the,

the intangibles and trying to make sure you're making a decision. That's, that's best for the program and the team, you know, moving forward, because it doesn't, it takes one guy to turn that locker room, you know, toxic. And it's, it's a very, very delicate thing. and the culture of your team has to be protected at all costs. You mentioned we've got about two minutes before we take the first break, but you mentioned the dog piles at the end of the season and having those images there for folks,

not only for the folks who participated in it, but the folks who were trying to be a part of it and understanding what it is. But that's a loud statement that the end result and the process getting to the end result, matter. Like it's not always about this particular moment. It is in this space, are you willing to do the work that we're going to be better during this time of year than say the beginning of the season where we're playing non-cons and not really knowing what's going on. Right. And that's,

that's again going back to where culture comes in. And that was that was very true of our team last year. Like it took us, you know, we took some some haymaker shots early in the season last year, losing McCona. Hey, you know, your preseason, All-American Friday night guy, the ace of staff and then losing Timberman for two months in the second game of the year when he got hit in the face, you know, on a comeback against Vanderbilt. You know, those are two pretty big pieces to your, to your pitching staff. And it took us a little while offensively to kind of figure out who we were. And, you know, you're trying to put pieces of the puzzle together with the lineup and which

one is the most cohesive. And it took us a while to get rolling. And it was if I know the fans, I remember too, probably about a month into the end of the season. And it wasn't until about that maybe halfway through that California trip that we kind of figured it out and kind of got it going. And then we had some big big games. You know, we host Oregon State. We take two out of three from them. And it was like we just needed that kind of breakthrough moment, you know, I think to get it going and get some belief and some confidence and some cohesiveness.

You know, where we can play complimentary baseball. And it's like we can win without, you know, our best, our best guys. It's like, we're good enough. We've got the depth to do it. And the way we finished, you know, last year, obviously the dog pile and went in the, you know, winning the Big Ten championship and everything was great. But, I mean, just how we did it. Like you said, the process of doing that, just the day to day.

And that was going back to that Oregon State, yeah, we beat them on a Friday night, like big time environment Friday night, you know, against a top five team and we beat them. And that Saturday game, they came out and they put it on us. And I remember talking to the team after that game and said, all right, this, this can, this loss and how we just played everything, it can either define us or it can be a defining moment, which one of the two. And we came out and we won the series. We take the series on Sunday and kind of just went off from there. And we won every series, I think, down the stretch, except for the road series against. Iowa and those were all, you know, competitive games could have gone either way, flip a coin,

but the culture kind of carries you through a lot of that stuff. And it definitely carried us down the stretch last year. And I know before we, before we go to break, there's a little preview teaser, but I would this, this year's team and what we saw this fall, even going back to later in the summer from a culture standpoint, chemistry standpoint, you know, we've kind of talked about it. This team, as fast as they jilled is kind of like gives me 2020. 24 or 2021, Hustler baseball vibes, just that, that type of leadership, that type of chemistry, that brotherhood, like the way they, how much they like each other and how much they get after it on a day and day out basis. I think we've set a pretty good foundation moving forward. Well, I mean, you know, winning championships in the Big Ten.

Certainly play into it. Well done. Kind, sir. We'll come back. I'll ask them about some of these players because, hey, Bach, you know, I'm kind of. of recruiter myself. We need some of these Husker baseball players on the airways on a weekly basis. I need to get to work. I need Harvilles. I need Harvilles list. I need his big board for great radio guys from this roster. We're going to get that from coach when we come back to one-on-one.