And let’s not forget McCleod was a real SEC ace too. Until the end of the year anyway. There was a lot of quality talent on that team. I’m not sure you could’ve scraped enough money together to keep the pitchers AND Tanner Allen, Rowdey Jordan, and Logan TannerQuote:
Originally Posted by Coach34
We have a segment of fans that overinflate MSU baseball history to fit their agenda and then try and crap on teams like SC, Vandy, Tennessee, Arkanasas and Florida because they supposedly don't have history like MSU. It's comical.Quote:
Originally Posted by Coach34
Here's a fun fact. Kevin O Sullivan has had five 50 win seasons in his career. Mississippi State baseball has 6 in it's history. Christopher Lemons owns TWO of those.
It's also the fact that for the most part, we sucked at everything in the 70s and 80s and were pretty good at baseball so some fans grew attached to it. A lot of fans became fans with Will and Raffy and so they expected that type of success all the time. It's no different than the people that became football fans when Mullen had us rolling. They expected that type of success all the time. We are seeing the same thing with people now. We had nonstandard success for an extended period of time and so that becomes the expectation instead of the exception. Look, we're a top 15 program. I'm not saying we should just be happy with making a regional. Omaha should be the goal. But you can't run to fire the coach every time you don't make it. It's ok to say the last 2 years were unacceptable, because they were, but also admit that Lemonis has guided this ballclub extremely well this year with everything that has happened.Quote:
Originally Posted by RockyDog
If we hadn't ditched it after 21 and was still rolling along in post season play, who knows? Imagine if we had continued the success we had before the Lemonis recruiting caught up to us. Or without Sims getting hurt. Lemonis has to prove he can recruit at a high level. Nothing shows he can do that.Quote:
Originally Posted by StarkVegasSteve
No- we cant. The big sexy hotshot portal player that is going to command big money isnt going to go to StarkVegas when he can party and spend his money in a much more fun place. These guys are 20-21 years old. We will not get anybody thats a flash kind of guy and your top portal guys are that guyQuote:
Originally Posted by Cooterpoot
side note- Montgomery didnt want to come back to Mississippi. End of story. We got excited because his parents started the whole thing. He wanted no part of it
and to take it a step further- NIL has just made it legal to do what they have done in football and basketball for decades. The difference is now that it is in baseball too now.
We dont get the flashy showboat in football or basketball and havent for a generation. Well-here it is in baseball now coming about
F'n aye.Quote:
Originally Posted by RockyDog
We had as good a money offer for Montgomery as A&M. He simply had a coach close to A&M and family not far. We couldn't match LSU for Skenes but he wasn't coming if we did. Neither were losses because of NIL. Those guys went for coaches more than money. Skenes gave half of his away.Quote:
Originally Posted by Coach34
There guys like the TN pitcher who took bids & tried to run up his money. We won't fool with many of those.
I am happy for the success this years team has had so far. And Lemonis deserves credit for that. And he deserves blame for what happened yesterday, at Florida, at Ole Miss, against Austin Peay(twice) and against Air Force. State loses a game to a team like South Alabama every year, so that one, I can let slide. But those collapses and just flat getting out played by Austin Peay are similar to last year. And I ain't in the forgiving mood for 2022-23 seasons.
Let's win the next 4 and lock up a Regional and win 1 or 2 in Hoover, and I'll definitely be crediting Lemonis for a really good turnaround. Can he do it in back to back years? He better!
With Foxhall gone and Parker being legit plus the program not looking like the wheels could fall off at any minute I have to believe that the odds of us landing a big fish out of the portal is more likely. Big fish = Skenes, Montgomery- although you could argue that keeping Dakota was like getting a big fish in some ways.
College baseball is changing and is going to change in a big way very soon. I'm very confident that 11.7 is about to go away for good very soon. The only question is going to be roster size because however large the roster is set is how many scholarships each team in the SEC is going to have. And we already have a pretty large baseball NIL war chest plus the fact that only a small amount of schools care about baseball means we have a chance to build championship teams in the very near future. And without having to supplement our player's scholarships with NIL our NIL is just going to go that much further. We're not going to have to tell a guy that is a junior drafted in the 14th round that they have to walk-on anymore and we can actually probably match whatever bonus that type of player might get in pro baseball. Essentially allowing that type of player to make more money in the long run even if they forfeit their draft leverage. Something like that could have allowed us to keep a guy like a Houston Harding for another year potentially.
So for the first time we're looking at an era where things that are MSU's strengths- fan support, facilities, and focus on the sport of baseball- will actually play up really well for us in the future. Unlike the 1990's when LSU had TOPs and steroids and 2010's when Vanderbilt had their "hardship" scholarships.
To me, all Lemonis has to do going forward is make some minor tweaks. Which in my opinion is an offensive analyst that can implement a Campbell University offensive approach with Gautreau used more for trouble shooting- which is really what Cann hired him to do in the first place. I think that will allow us to get off to a better start and avoid some of the early season mid major losses to Austin Peay. More importantly I'm hoping it will help with baserunning which has been a huge issue this year and probably cost us at least a few games.
It’s just crazy to me that people still want Lemonis fired. He has done a good job this year and we are pretty much guaranteed to make a regional and possibly even host. I understand being hesitant about him before the season after 2 really bad years, but he also had 2 really great years. We have a winning record in the SEC and we were picked last in the west alongside Ole Miss. I will admit I don’t know baseball the way I do football and basketball but it just seems strange
People like to be "right".Quote:
Originally Posted by PGHBulldogBG
keep telling yourself that as we continue to not sign the big flashy portal transfers year after year in the coming futureQuote:
Originally Posted by Cooterpoot
So many people on here said we'd be lucky to win 9 sec games again this year and that we would suck again. Now that we haven't sucked this year they have to move the bar to next year and say we'll suck next year. You're right it's strange among other things.Quote:
Originally Posted by PGHBulldogBG
Baseball is a bit different than football. Money is not THE ONLY factor. For Montgomery, our offer was better, but he didn't want to play in MS. For Skenes, our offer was comparable to LSU, but he wanted to play for Johnson. Parker gives us the chance to get a high level pitcher or two out of the portal. I mean we're at least getting visits. We can't even get that in the other sports. Our problem the last two years has been the perception that our program was down, we won't have that perception this offseason so it will be interesting to see what happens. I'm not predicting we'll get the top portal guy, but we at least have more to sell this time around.Quote:
Originally Posted by Coach34
It's fine to not like some things, but we've passed the point of firing now. People need to shut up and move on about firing the man. We just need a State friendly contract, but if he takes us to a super, you can forget that too.Quote:
Originally Posted by PGHBulldogBG
Starkville is a great place. It’s unique, it’s a good town, and it’s somewhere you can take your family to and feel safe and enjoy the weekend watching sports. It just doesn’t compare to some of the other schools. Our marketing team is also a$$. Instead of leaning into cool things about the university, like helping put men on the moon, we lean into the cow college. Meanwhile, scUM gets ranked as one of the biggest party schools around and just rolls with it. I don’t think our school admin wants MSU to be seen as a fun place to be, but if we’re being honest, we aren’t taken seriously as place to get your education either. I don’t even think Stark has a bowling alley. It’s going to be hard to get a kid from a major metro area to consider living there for 4 years. That’s more than 20% of the kid’s current life. Most of us at that age couldn’t see past the next test, forget 4 years.
Half the frats are full of good Ol’ country boys too. It’s a unique thing and I am not saying that should change. MSU is just a different type of place than probably any other college in the SEC. Even Vandy has Nashville. Starkville just needs something extra. The pieces are there, but it needs something more than cowbells to stand out.
The only real knock on Starkville and State is it's not a metro area with a ton of national retailers and things to do. You have kids that prefer that and you have kids that prefer the college town experience like Starkville. Starkville is booming a bit, it's a lot like Hattiesburg back in the 90s right now. Just need to keep growing it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brobi-wan
It all comes down to branding and buy in. Ole Miss has branded themselves as a cool university and Oxford has branded itself as a cool town and their fans spout that info off ad nauseum . Oxford and Starkville have almost identical demographics, but because their fans drink the kool aid and spread the propaganda the rest of the country believes it. Starkville and Mississippi State have fought buying in to being a cool place to be for the better part of 30 years and are just now turning the tide in the other direction. Thanks in large part to Parker Wiseman, Lynn Spruill, and Mark Keenum.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brobi-wan
The other big thing that Mississippi State needs to do is start recruiting out of state students at a much heavier clip. We need to get established in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte, Birmingham, and Nashville. Our academic recruiting focuses more on the MS Delta than big metropolitan cities in the South. That HAS to change. Our fans have bagged on OM for the longest time for having all these out of state students but guess where a lot of their money comes from....THOSE SAME OUT OF STATE STUDENTS. It's time to tap into that. Also, our alumni dept needs to get off their ass and start trying to get the young alumni involved. I know people that graduated between 2015-2019 who HAVE YET to come back to campus since they graduated. OM makes a big deal about getting their alumni back to campus at least once in the fall and once in the spring. Our alumni dept instead focuses on Bob from Bogue Chitto and Gary from Grenada.
This.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cooterpoot