Quote Originally Posted by BrunswickDawg View Post
In general, I agree with those expectations. I will say this though - when you are considering "is the coach meeting expectations", I think you have to be more holistic about the program and measure it by more then a singular item. There are so many more variables in college baseball now versus even a decade ago. More schools are spending big. There has been a massive talent trickle down effect from MLB cutting the draft in half and killing 40 MiLB teams. NIL is a now a factor. And we play by far in the toughest conference in the country. One season doesn't make a program, but the wrong decision can break one.

The run we had from 2011-2021 was the best stretch in program history and resulted in our finally reaching the pinnacle. We put every single ounce of effort we had into getting not just baseball, but our entire university over a major psychological hump.
Additionally, the program had to overcome massive coaching instability to do it. And if you don't think that was a herculean effort - just look at what similar instability has done to football post-Mullen. Frankly, I think we were lucky to have some of the right players, with the most supportive fanbase in the country, and that's the only reason we made it through that without imploding. I don't think there is another program in the country that could have come out the other side of that and won a Natty. We can't take that for granted, but it doesn't make us immune from having bad years either.

And that tough conference has gotten 10x tougher than it already was in the last 10 years. Tennessee hires Vitello, LSU replaces Manieri with Johnson and wins a national championship, Butch has Auburn rolling, Ole Miss wins a national championship, Florida has won a national championship and played for another, A&M replaces Childress with Schlossnagle and is rolling, DVH has never stopped rolling, Corbin has won 2 in that time frame and played for two more, Bama seems to actually care about baseball, and to top all of it off: Texas is about to join the SEC.

This league is just a beast that is only getting better. Gone are the days where it was LSU, State, and everyone else.