Cohen's comments in Locke's blog are great*

basedog

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I don't understand HOW a coach who's only hobby is baseball as well as his life could have left Msu in as bad of shape as he did. I don't know if it was more of Polk's coaching pattern or Raffo's recruiting that was the worse, but I do know with the staff we ended up with last year had to be the worse in Msu's baseball history. I have had a hard time of this Polk thing as I have followed baseball at Msu from 1970, man is it sad to me. Thank you John Cohen as I know it's a light at the end of the tunnel and it ain't no freight train that needs to get turned around.
 

Shmuley

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manually typed addresses on thousands of envelopes. Can you imagine the amount of time that crazy bastard wasted poking the NCAA's hornet nest that could have been spent recruiting?
 

Agentdog

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You may know this but in baseball....if you don't have pitching, then you are not going to win very many games. So, with Polk sitting around writting letters and not recruiting because of scholarship limits, I can see, very easily, how State could be so down. You don't recruit any horses to take the hill......you get beat. </p>
 

RonnyAtmosphere

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...how good a coach Cohen is, if he sweeps Valparaiso this week, he'll enter SEC play with a 10-4 record.

3 things:

1) There is no way in hell Polk would have taken these players & entered SEC play with double digit wins.

2) I don't care what happened @ Hawaii: if, before the season started, you would told me this team would have only had 4-5 losses entering SEC play, I would have not believed you.

3) Looking at the other SEC teams' records so far (and some of the bad losses), I think MSU will be a middle tier baseball team in the SEC team this season.

I realize patdog thinks this is a roster made up of nothing but DII players, but if they get hot in about a month they could easily exceed expectations.
 

Todd4State

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He finally forgot more than he knew. Or whatever the sheep saying was- "Polk knows more about baseball than you'll ever know! BAAAA!!!"

Polk's a complex character to say the least. He was arrogant enough to believe that he could build a team strictly out of his camp and that people would come to play at MSU solely because of him. I really think that Raffo was taking orders. And when you basically live in a vacuum, you're not going to catch onto things like current trends in the game.
 

maroonmania

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added problem of a fairly weak offense as well. Conner Powers is pretty good, certainly having Adkins this year is helpful, and we have some other decent hitters here and there, but we have NO ONE up and down our lineup that would put any fear or even anxiety into an opposing pitcher. Disregarding the pitching, we scored 3, 4, 5 and 5 runs in our 4 games in Hawaii. That's not going to win you a lot of games regardless of what kind of pitching you have in college ball. It will help a little to get Hogue back healthy to at least get more speed on the basepaths.
 
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bradclark
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Nominate | ReportPosted: Today 3:51 PM

Ron Polk

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Saw a thread below about him. Out of curiosity, where is he? Any chance of getting back for some games and allowing us to "re-embrace" him? Would like to hear from him and how he is. Reply | Quote

It's really crazy that for a coach at MSU that won as much as Polk did, we have some people that don't know that he's at UAB. This guy is still probably wondering when we will put an upper deck on the east side at Scott Field.
 

patdog

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he was a lot more concerned with doing things the "right" way than he was with winning games. Don Quixote had nothing on him.
 

Todd4State

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if you score 4-5 runs a game, you should win your share of games. I agree that our offense is not all that great, but at least Cohen is maximizing what we can get out of it. If you get a quality start- three runs over five innings and the bullpen takes care of business, and then boom, you win 4-3.
 

8dog

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as possible of saying that this program is a disaster and that a trip to Hawaii was not a good idea at all.

My favorite exchange:

NewsGuy: Hawaii really had the bats going.

Cohen: They were hitting .235 coming into the series so that should tell you what kind of weekend we had.

or maybe it was when he said how easy State was to gameplan for last year.
 

maroonmania

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to routinely hold the opposition below 4 runs. And I certainly don't expect that from our staff this year. You would like to expect that kind of production from your Friday night starter but you can't expect it from much of anyone else.
 

VegasDawg13

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What good comes from publicly stating that your baseball doesn't have any talent?

Regardless of how true those statements may be, to say them publicly seems completely self-serving.</p>
 

8dog

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and I like an acknowledgement that the team is not where it should be.

That's what is so great about them.
 

VegasDawg13

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There are ways to say that the team isn't where it should be without saying our pitchers' stuff just isn't good enough.

I can think of no reason to publicly say that your team doesn't have talent that isn't self-serving.
 

Coach33.sixpack

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If I went to Hawaii now I would fail out of school. He is right, terrible time to take a trip. What does it do for us? Are we planning on recruiting in Hawaii or something?

Thanks again LT and Polk
 

VegasDawg13

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Well, I heard a lot of it from our last football coach, too. I didn't like it then, I don't like it now, and I won't like it if Mullen does it.

The only reason to say that publicly is to let the fans and alumni know that it isn't your fault your team is sucking. While I don't doubt that is true, I don't see how it does anything but let the current team know that their coach has no faith in their ability.</p>
 

VegasDawg13

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He's not required to give a full and honest answer to every question asked of him from media members. He could've said, "We're just not getting the job done right now," and that wouldn't have been a lie. But that would have done is put the responsibility on the whole team and give the message that we can get the job done. What he said implies that we just aren't good enough. While that's probably true, it's not necessary to state it publicly.</p>
 

windcrysmary

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the media before games...saying things like "if we don't improve in such and such areas, we'll get beat." of course you know what usually follow: a Bamer *** whoopin'...prolly fired the players up......

right now we are NOT very good and maybe it will light a fire under their asses to improve....

I have full confidence in Cohen at this point and I think he knows what he's doing...
 

Original48

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started with. Jackie left Croom a whole lot more than Croom left Mullen. Croom wanted to distance himself from everything Jackie and then started poor mouthing what he had left. You can bet your last nickel any success we have next year is due to coaching and not talent.
 

rebfan04

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Ed Orgeron said "I need a team of SEC players, we don't have SEC players." in the 2007 season.

In reality, he had players, but he didn't have a 17'ing clue.

Not saying Cohen doesn't know what he's doing, but the comments are similar.
 

patdog

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I thought Cutcliffe was fired because he couldn't recruit. And now you're telling me that Orgeron had a lot of talented SEC players. WTF is the truth? Or does your story change from day to day.
 

rebfan04

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He said "I don't have SEC players, I need to get some SEC players." He said that after a loss.

You know, after 3 of his own recruiting classes.

The same team that went 9-4 the next year and won the Cotton Bowl.

Nothing has changed about my story on Orgeron. He was an average recruiter. He had a horrid class, a great class, and and average class.
 

Todd4State

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If Cohen can't bring in SEC players by that time, and based on his first full class and his time at UK, I have no reason to believe that he won't, then yes, there's something wrong.
 

Todd4State

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Cohen knows what the hell he is doing.

As far as his comments, I think he is just testing the players to see how they respond. And I think their response is going to factor into next year possibly as far as bringing certain guys back or whatever. I don't think he's happy with their effort, in particular the last two games, and he wants to see who has enough of a sack to prove him wrong.
 

rebfan04

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that it sounds like Orgeron, but doesn't necessarily mean Cohen will be a failure like Orgeron.

Point being, I've never been a big fan of a coach talking down their players in the press. Its one thing to say "we need to do this better" or "so and so needs to improve this" but saying (or basically saying) your players aren't talented enough has never been something that garnered alot of respect, in my opinion.
 

patdog

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Orgeron had never been anything more than a D-line coach. Cohen has been a successful head coach at this level for about 8 years.