1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Nebraska Men's Tennis Coach Peter Kobelt-PickleBall : November 18th, 11:45am

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Nebraska Men's Tennis Coach Peter Kobelt-PickleBall Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

You're listening to One-on-One with D.P. Brought you by Canopy Street Market on 93-7 The Ticket and the Ticketfm.com. Peter Grobel, Husker Men's Tennis. He mentioned pickleball, and as a tennis coach, I've heard different conversations about pickleball, but you have an interesting perspective on it. So I'll ask you to speak on Pickleball. yeah um when it first started to get hot i was like ah not a fan i played once or twice i lost two games the paddle might have gone flying through the air and that was certainly out out on pickleball

but on a serious note i think it for one it does it does a few things that are uh better than tennis especially at the on the front end i think it's it's easier to get out there and easier to play with family and friends. There's not a huge learning curb. It's a fun way to get out there and get some exercise. It's pretty cheap. You can set up a court in your driveway. There's some things that courts are everywhere. Courts are everywhere. And I think what it's done too is it's the tennis world and the pickleball world have kind of collided a little bit. And I think they're starting to integrate a little bit too. I think you're from pickleball people naturally the next conversation piece is tennis on is that that's naturally the

next level and you have some former players that have played professional tennis on the men's and women's side coming into pickleball like agacy steffy aggacy steffy graph jack socks sam query uh you know there's there's a few more out there that i'm forgetting but some major major major names that played tennis that are now and erotic another brusky guy uh all in the getting into the pickleball space And I think it's just bringing more eyes to both games, but specifically tennis. So, you know, tennis in the 90s was one of the most popular sports in the United States. And then I think, you know, baseball kind of took over.

And now I think it's probably NFL football. And all these sports are kind of competing for the number one sport. I don't know if tennis will ever make it back up there again. But I think for tennis, you have to kind of view pickleball as a booster in a way to kind of bring more views back. into the tennis world that from people that would normally never watch tennis or pay attention to tennis now they might actually turn it on and see i think it's all good if you can find it i think the american the american superstar is required for tennis to move back up the ring i agree right i think the american superstar we know this about us we know that we pay more

attention uh the william sisters did an amazing job of pulling people back into the space every time there is a great American player, there is a swell, groundswell, of fan support. But if they're not buying in, they won't watch. That's just, that's just how it works. It is a big weekend.

State College, a freshman, a true freshman quarterback. And I'll try to ask you if there's any correlation to tennis to having a true freshman come in and just out of pure need ending up in a critical spot in your lineup and having a performance like T.J. Lateef had, then giving a week to prepare to travel to a tough place to play. What happened in the two weeks for the freshman?

What did the coach, what is as a coach, what are you feeding? Are you correcting mistakes? Are you building, you know, positive support and reinforce? enforcement on what he did? Are you trying to add to the toolkit? Do you just want to leave it alone and let it progress organically? Or do you press play and say, it's Penn State, we need you to be the best version of yourself? Sure. Well, first of all, I am nowhere near the coach Matt Ruhl is. So I'm not going to pretend to know exactly what he's doing. But if that were to happen in tennis. I think when you first get a recruit, regardless of their age or their experience level,

I like to, when we have new guys come in, I like to test them out right away and see exactly what we have like today. And then you kind of know, okay, like this is where we need to start building. And then I think coach rule has it from just from watching from the outside, I think they have a similar philosophy where they you know they need to know and at this point i think tj got came here in j in january for the bowl game so they had they've been with him for a year now they they know what he's able to do they know what kind of uh person he is they know what kind of work ethic he is they know what type of quarterback he is they know like you know how he sees the field and what he's good at what he's not good at so i think they take him they they they might add a play or two that

they think he can be good at. And then they also look at Penn State and they say, okay, like where, what can we do with TJ that Penn State might struggle with a little bit? And then you try and marry those two things the best, the best you can if you have two weeks time. If you have one week time, that might be a little bit tougher. But I think you never want to see your number one quarterback go down. But I think for TJ to have an extra week of preparation, like I think it's pretty good timing for something bad like that to happen. It gives them a second to kind of relax, look over the film, see some of the things that he thought he did well or he didn't do well,

and then kind of build a plan and add a few wrinkles that maybe no one else has seen so far this year. So I would assume that there's probably a wrinkle or two that Nebraska hasn't ran, that Penn State's not going to know it was on film. And that's kind of the battle, I would assume. you know, but from football game, the football game is when do you add plays, when you take plays away, how simple do you keep it, when do you put more on their plate? And I think they have a pretty good idea what T.J. is able to do. And that game against UCLA, I think, gave him a lot of confidence that he can handle more and he's going to be

able to do more. Looking to you, crystal ball kind, sir. What's the result that of it? Oscars are winning. We already said, actually, I think I predicted that this game, they were going to lose this game early on the season. But, I think we got to momentum. I think the guys are confident. I think we had an extra week to get healthy, and I think we're ready to go. You heard it here.

Peter Corbilt, happy birthday. Thank you, kind, sir. Once again, great hour of conversation. Appreciate you. Appreciate you guys. Don't go anywhere. Adam Keraker, the big guy, comes in next.

Here on the ticket.