Yep.
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What is amazing is that you always wonder how much time winning a national title buys a HC at certain sports at different schools.
I never thought it would be less than two years at MSU for a coach who won a national title in a big 3 sport. I mean, don't get me wrong, losing 17 straight SEC games is like one of those terrible hypotheticals people come up after we make it to the CWS.
You know, "would you go 0-30 in the SEC next year in exchange for winning the title this year?" I think everyone always says, yes i'll take it and won't fire the coach as long as they bring home the national title for our school, especially in baseball where we have been so damn close.
Well - we are basically living that hypothetical and its amazing how quickly people forget the title. Now, I am not making any excuses, i mean at this point I think if he ends up missing a regional we go 10-20 in the SEC i think its a pretty obvious move, but what will be funny is that it appears our friends to the north just can't help but copy us and are trying to go 10-20 (at best) in the SEC after winning the title. I'll be interested in how long until the shine wears off there.
Anyone that thinks it was a fluke to win a national championship is stupid. You don't fluke your way to that even with talent.
Look at the NCAA Tournament. Talent alone doesn't win you games. You've got to have some talent but you have to have a lot of other things including coaching.
Lemonis and staff coached their asses off in the championship year. Right now they aren't. This team looks unprepared mentally to compete. When you come from a culture where you don't win championships, that first one can mess with the mentality of younger guys or guys that didn't have to put in max effort to get that. I think of Tanner Allen, Jake Mangum, and others and the amount of work and sweat equity those guys had in the program to get us to that level. Now these guys are living off the legend they created.
These guys haven't really sniffed that and I don't think Lemonis has done a good job of ramping up the toughness needed post championship when you are always the hunted team. Teams bring it to us every game now and you have to adjust your coaching to that. He hasn't and neither has Foxhall. Watch our pitching staff and tell me they are a mentally tough group of people. That's where we lack right now and Lemonis has to fix that program wide.
This team's mentality right now is one where they are just waiting for the other shoe to drop. When one bad thing happens, it snowballs and gets bigger. It's like they are in quick sand, and no matter how hard they try to get out, they keep sinking. We aren't seeing the Preston Johnson type of mentality where he waves bye bye to the ball and then refocuses.
I think all baseball championships have a certain level of luck. The braves' WS was with one of their worst teams of late. I don't think state's championship team was our best team ever. What doesn't involve luck is putting yourself in the best position to succeed in the postseason. This is something we did quite well our championship year.
Yeah you can see it. They start really pressing and tightening up when something adverse happens. During 2021 i didn't even worry when we got behind because we alwyays found a way to win or to at least put ourselves in a position to win late in the game. Baseball is so mental especially with young players and they're basically teenagers and learning to overcome adversity and move on is something you have to learn. And you're right there is a mental toughness that's required to do that.
ETA I will say this the players seem to be putting out the effort but that mental aspect can outweigh the physical.
100% agree on that! It permeated that whole 2021 team. Just like anything in baseball these things are contagious and you have players that push each other to be better and of course the opposite is true as well, when things go bad that gets contagious too.
I heard Bill Belichik mic'ed up on the sideline and I think it was 2009. The saints were blowing them out and he was telling Brady toward the end of the game that the team just wasn't mentally tough and he couldn't get them to perform to the level needed. After that season he pretty much flipped the roster.
And we still have guys who were contributors on that team. Luke Hancock, Kellum Clark, Lane Forsythe, Cade Smith (not contributing this year due to sickness), KC Hunt (was more of an observer on that team)...etc. I just can't figure out why things have gone sideways.
This makes me think so much of 2019 in football where, went things went wrong, it went badly wrong.
I mean, what's it going to take to get these pitchers to just relax and throw strikes. Guys like Dohm, Holcombe, Clintje, and Loftin have the stuff that even if they give up contact over the plate, they aren't going to get hit that bad. Heck, I think Loftin has given up just a .149 BAA on the year while he's walked 24 batters in 24 some odd innings. Clintje has a .165 BAA but has 15 walks in 20 innings. Teams are hitting Holcombe at around .185 and Dohm at around .200, so the issue isn't these guys giving up hits and loud contact. It's that they just aren't consistently throwing strikes.
Lemonis favorite song. And apparently Biancos also
https://youtu.be/7HfkSzsyh1E
We also played 7 games against national seeds in CWS. It is hard to win but the contrast to our NC is OM last year. Last team in and didn't play a national seed even one game to win NC. Only team to ever do that. That is about as close to luck as you get but even then they had to play and earn it.