Kiffin to resign on Friday, Napier is the new coach

[BeardoMSU]

You are correct, I R Dumb. I got them backwards.

I'll always be grateful for what he did for us and respect him, but there is a reason no one snatched him up to be their head coach.

[State82]

I'll always be grateful for what he did for us and respect him, but there is a reason no one snatched him up to be their head coach.

This is spot on. Gary deserved just compensation for the job he performed for our baseball program that year. And he deserved to be WELL compensated. But the compensation in NO way should have been the head coach position.

[FISHDAWG]

OM has to hire a certain breed of coach. One who doesn't mind an organization of alums breaking every rule in the NCAA handbook. B/c of this I don't think they'll ever hire a Clawson, Satterfield, Klieman type coach. You gotta have a Nutt, Freeze, Kiffin kind of coach.

is Bobby Collins still around ?

[maroonmania]

This is spot on. Gary deserved just compensation for the job he performed for our baseball program that year. And he deserved to be WELL compensated. But the compensation in NO way should have been the head coach position.

Agree, I'm very grateful to Henderson for what he did for us after Canny got canned. However, GH is in the twilight of his career whereas Lemonis could be the long term solution at our HC position. Everything certainly looks good on that front so far. Plus I don't think its even close when comparing the recruiting ability between the two.

[Todd4State]

Nope, Lemonis. (Edit: I should have said Henderson. I am dumb. )

For him to take over like he did, hold the team together, and get to Omaha. I think that deserved a very serious effort to keep him. One I don't think we made.

I appreciate what Gary Henderson did too. But long term keeping him as the head coach would not have been what was best for MSU. Henderson is old school as a pitching coach and in this day and age if you want to attract the best arms you need someone that is more current- like a Wes Johnson or a Scott Foxhall. And yeah, I guess we could have kept Henderson and hired Foxhall but in doing that there is the potential for clashing on methods and things that could have caused problems. So then the only way it would have made sense is if Henderson was elite at strategy and in game managing and that year he showed that he was not.

I think hiring Lemonis was a good decision overall. The only thing I would like to see is an assistant with MLB scouting ties on staff. And no I don't think anyone should be fired or anything like that but when one of our coaches leaves we definitely should try to go with someone in that direction. That was the thing that excited me the most about Cann- the scouting connections.

[msbulldog]

You don't think coach Gautreau has MLB connections he played pro ball and Canny hired him away from Scott Boras, the top agent in baseball.

[The Federalist Engineer]

Nope, Lemonis. (Edit: I should have said Henderson. I am dumb. )

For him to take over like he did, hold the team together, and get to Omaha. I think that deserved a very serious effort to keep him. One I don't think we made.

Henderson deserves credit but not the HC position. The 2018 team was much more than Ron Polk's false dawn in 2007, because we beat Vandy in Nashville came 1-game shy of playing for a championship. That's about as good as 1985.

But 2018 felt like a combination of luck and great southern engineering. After Ethan Small, that pitching staff was all duct tape, wire, flex-seal, clamps, prayer, and super-glue.

With Lemonis we won't have 1b'men closing games for us. We won't have a walk-on as the Saturday starter, 5 transfers in the starting 9, and we won't need to flip USM recruits at the last minute.

With Lemonis we are going to war with an elite talent level. If we could just get so lucky as the 2018 team, we would waltz to the damn NC.

By the way, I am not saying that Lemonis just turned this around on his own. Cohen, Cannizarro, and Henderson somehow kept the recruiting classes together. Cohen, back in 2011 barely had MSU recruiting on par with Kentucky. Today, we are better than everybody except Vandy and a few others. We might have achieved parity with LSU.

[State82]

All good points Fed Eng

[Todd4State]

You don't think coach Gautreau has MLB connections he played pro ball and Canny hired him away from Scott Boras, the top agent in baseball.

He has more connections to Boras- which is valuable but he doesn't have the scouting and front office connections that Cann did.

The scouting connections are more valuable to me because they are part of the organizations that are actually picking the players.

[Todd4State]

Henderson deserves credit but not the HC position. The 2018 team was much more than Ron Polk's false dawn in 2007, because we beat Vandy in Nashville came 1-game shy of playing for a championship. That's about as good as 1985.

But 2018 felt like a combination of luck and great southern engineering. After Ethan Small, that pitching staff was all duct tape, wire, flex-seal, clamps, prayer, and super-glue.

With Lemonis we won't have 1b'men closing games for us. We won't have a walk-on as the Saturday starter, 5 transfers in the starting 9, and we won't need to flip USM recruits at the last minute.

With Lemonis we are going to war with an elite talent level. If we could just get so lucky as the 2018 team, we would waltz to the damn NC.

By the way, I am not saying that Lemonis just turned this around on his own. Cohen, Cannizarro, and Henderson somehow kept the recruiting classes together. Cohen, back in 2011 barely had MSU recruiting on par with Kentucky. Today, we are better than everybody except Vandy and a few others. We might have achieved parity with LSU.

Very good post. Although I will say Konnor Pilkington was a potential first round talent and under Henderson he ended up a third round guy.

I think we were able to keep the classes mostly together because of what MSU baseball is. Which is a compliment to the MSU fans and our tradition. Butch Thompson took a few recruits with him that could have helped us like Jack Owen and that hurt us a little bit. Wes Johnson also took a couple to Arkansas if I remember correctly.

I think Cohen getting Chris Stratton was BIG back in the day. That was the first big Mississippi recruit we had landed since Mitch Moreland or Ed Easley back in the day.