Quote Originally Posted by StarkVegasSteve View Post
So I've seen it a lot this year and it got me thinking...what are our program expectations year in and year out. Obviously we know we had a 5 year stretch, COVID eliminated a year, where we were probably the most spoiled fan base in the country. 5 supers in 5 years and 3 trips to Omaha capped with a national championship. That is not the norm. Now I have said time and time again that our palace was not built for April, it was built for June. So in my opinion, I think it's the NCAA tourney every year, a host every other year, and a Super every 2 to 3 years. I think with our buy in and with how we generally recruit, Omaha once every 4 years is a reasonable expectation. How does everyone else feel?
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.