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If they get Tanner Hall and Hurston Waldrep back next year then they should be a National Seed. Jay Johnson said Dollander from TN and Waldrep were "easily" the best two pitchers they faced all year.
They returned a lot of position guys from last year but keep in mind that USM had to replace their entire rotation and their best reliever from a year ago. Hall and Waldrep were sophomores that took a big step forward. Their Sunday guy, Riggins, is also good and they brought him in as a grad transfer from Delta State.
Berry is a really underrated coach. They took a bit of a step back in the mid 2010?s but have been no worse than a 2 seed every year since 2016 and hosted twice. Now have a legit chance to get to Omaha. USM is easy to poke fun at sometimes but they?re a very respectable baseball program.
Ostrander is a good coach. He's improved their pitching a ton since arriving. He was good at the Juco level too. I wish we had offered a couple pitchers they signed this round.
USM has had some solid assistant coaches.
What is Berry's salary? How much money does his assistants make? How much does Lemonins make? How much does Geautreaux and Foxhall make?
Yes but completely missed the point of the post. It's about what they've done right and how they evaluate talent. With a quarter our budget, etc they consistently get the most of their players and find diamond in the ruff much like Mullen did. This wasn't a post to talk crap about our staff/players
Aka props to them. Let's keep doing what we're doing right and pick up what they are that we aren't-- even if that's stealing a coach or player now that the restrictions are changed/ changing with baseball
They've made two supers EVER. One CWS EVER. It's been 13 yrs since they won a regional. They're getting about what a lot of teams get out of a low budget and bad conference.
More salt to the wound, USM vs. OM for Omaha & we couldn't even make Hoover after a National Championship! Oh well, here's to a very good year in FB. Hail State!
My point is it's apple and oranges because you're comparing a SEC blueblood program to a good mid major program. It would be like Alabama having a ton of injuries including to their top two QB's and RB's and going 5-7 a year after winning the National Championship while UAB goes 11-1 and crashes one of the BCS bowls and asking what UAB is doing better than Alabama.
Both teams build their teams differently. What you are seeing is USM having a lot of veteran players performing well at their peak after a few years of development. Some of them are COVID sophomores. USM has to take players that are under the radar and develop them to succeed. That works fine in the Sun Belt. In the SEC that's going to look like our 2011 team. And sure, doing that they can compete with SEC teams 5-6 times a year especially with saavy scheduling- I believe they pitched their ace during our midweek game. But over the long haul their style wouldn't work at the level we expect over 30 games.
I don't think our "problem" is evaluating talent as much as it was pitchers staying healthy. Remember every player that USM was not only passed on by MSU- but also by Ole Miss and every other SEC team too.
This is usm'a shot. They been building for this year. They're gonna lose a lot off this team so this is their shot to see how far they can go.
That's another thing too. Their assistants are going to get opportunities to either be head coaches or coach in the SEC. Creel may stay since he's an alum unless it's a head coaching job. Ostrander used to be the pitching coach at Alabama. He's SEC caliber for sure. Would absolutely trade him for Foxhall right now without any shame.
Yep. And that's the difference I'm talking about. When they're just going to regionals as a three seed or whatever no one on this board is saying we should look at what they're doing or however they want to phrase it. This team will be unique for them too because it's right at the beginning of the portal/NIL era and I think they're going to have to adjust their model. Those two starting pitchers that they have that are sophomores could very easily be pitching in the SEC for someone next year. We certainly could get Storm from them if we want to. Montenegro is their version of Tanner Allen and he's a senior. It's going to be a lot harder for them to build a team going forward like this. They're going to likely have to rely on transfers from SEC schools like Luke Reynolds. And then the Sun Belt scholarship situation is an unknown as well. If they only have 25 scholarships to use and MSU/Ole Miss have 30 that could be a disadvantage as well. We'll see.
Ostrander is why they are making this run. He is one hell of a developer of arms. USM needs to beat Ole Miss and capitalize on this run, because I don't see any chance of Ostrander not being hired away this offseason. Hell, I wish we had him...dude can coach. And I'm not even on the fire Foxhall wagon...I just think Ostrander is THAT good of a coach. Kudos to Berry for making the Ostrander hire, which in my opinion is what has taken them from the typical USM that is slightly above average, and elevated them to a Top 15-20 team this year.
Whoever wins the first game I think wins. Buzzards have the advantage especially with their Ace on the mound. But Ole Dixie is pretty hot to say the least, all bout clutch hitting I say.
I agree. And as I said Ostrander has coached at Alabama so he is SEC caliber. He has been successful everywhere going back to Delta State. For them to sustain their success they are going to have to be able to absorb losing their assistants at some point because they're not going to be able to keep them if they keep going to Super Regionals and maybe Omaha.