Is this as bad as
- Thread starter bigbub50
- Start date
Croom only lost to Maine once.
We have a mid level big ten baseball coach. He is what he is. Not sure how he pulled that natty off but he needs replacing asap. It's gonna be pathetic when we start playing real teams instead of cupcakes at home.
The fact is, winning a national title in baseball is a lot about luck. In the last 50 years, we've had 6 different coaches take us to Omaha (virtually every coach we've had), and 3 take us to the semifinals or better. When you're in the mix that often, you're bound to win one somewhere (sorry Mike Martin - most unlucky coach in history). It's become very obvious we won that title in spite of the coach, and not because of him.
Coach O won the natty at LSU. When you have the players, it's a good bit easier
Agree about the luck involved. We barely won a couple of those CWS games, and one unlucky decision would change the outcome. If we had hired the best coach in the country instead of Lemonis, we very likely would have missed out on the NC, but would have a competent, competitive team today.
A casino analogy is coming to mind. The CWS is like a craps or poker table. The best coaches consistently get to the table every year in a prime spot. After that, lots of luck is involved. For the last several years, we aren’t at the table at all, in fact we forgot our ID and security won’t even let us indoors.
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I disagree. We were all celebrating Lemonis’ ability to “push the right buttons” in 2019 and 2021.
That said, we’ve clearly trended down as his fingerprints became more imbedded on the program. The program just doesn’t have the same edge to it. Maybe NIL is a part? Who knows.
I think this team can make the NCAA tournament, but they’re off to a tough start. I’ll see where we’re at entering SEC play.
I am not seeing it but this is also my fear that we will limp our way as a 3 seed in the tourney and Selmon will keep Lemonchisk around another season.
^^^^This^^^^ Lemonis and GoThro are either really bad at evaluating talent or are really bad at recruiting talent. The bottom half of our batting order wouldn’t start for Air Force or APeay.
He also tended to leave pitchers in several batters too long. We lost several games when someone was struggling on the mound and didn't get pulled until the bases were cleaned off.
It’s pretty easy to “push all the right buttons” when you’ve got great player & leaders like that team had. Even still, luck was involved. What if we’d faced dominant kumar Rocker instead of average Kumar, what if we’d faced NC State instead of Vandy, what if we’d got the covid instead of NC State? Lot of things had to go our way we had no control over. Same can be said for any national title team.
No way in hell that happens. We are 2-4 against two teams we should have swept. If we do, then i tip my hat to Lemonhead for turning this crapshow of a season around.
I'm not as nervous this year because
1. We got turned down by the easy names last time, so there's no need to revisit them
2. We can go after a Vitello-type home run if we want to and if we miss...
3. There's an obvious hire with Haire where we would be the premiere opening and a no-brainer for him to say yes
He pulled that natty because of the players. His coaching is subpar. See his record, and team stats since losing those players.
He had been coaching those players for 3 years. He has to at least get some credit for that.
I am loving the vigor some people have to hang onto the notion this guy was a good coach at some point. I’m adding you all to my legal defense team if I ever shoot someone in the middle of Times Square. He has taken one of the easiest places in the country to not be a laughingstock and made it a laughingstock. But sure he was instrumental in Tanner Allen or Landon Sims development.
So are you saying that all our players from the Natty just developed themselves despite his coaching?
This is absolutely true. Case in point, the mississippi rebels were the VERY LAST NAME called on selection sunday 2022. They were going to can their long-time coach as soon as the season was over. Then a funny thing happened on the way to Omaha. Luck does tend to favor the most prepared but sometimes weird things happen.
We had some teams in the 1980’s that I think were way better than the team that actually won it. Yes, luck definitely is part of it. You have to get to Omaha and after that anything can happen. I will spend the rest of my life thinking that if Gene Morgan doesn’t take a line drive off of the ankle in the 1985 Omaha run, we win it all. That group of players was one of the best teams ever assembled.