Quote Originally Posted by AlSwearengen View Post
Winning at a high level, you would think, should help with recruiting higher level talent out of the portal. We have pretty much disappeared from the national discussion since winning the title and that isn?t good recipe for recruiting against lsu, ark, Tenn, etc. that have been winning. We also need to see some of our pitchers progress and become dominant, making Parker look like a top developer of talent. That and money is what players want to see.
The thing is after a couple of years of maybe going portal heavy to get things in place our primary source of players under O'Connor is going to come from the high school ranks after he gets his program completely in place. And that's not a bad thing because he is really good at player development and recruiting. And yes, we will use the portal to fill gaps and that's not going to change but I also do not expect us to go as portal heavy as LSU seems to do every year. But if our fans think we are going to live and die by the portal under O'Connor they are going to be disappointed.

And I say maybe portal heavy because we added a lot of guys with multiple years like Nunnalee, Tomas Volinicus, William Kirk, and Ryder Woodson plus we also have guys like McPherson, Foster, and Stone that have two years left as well before becoming draft eligible. And by year two I fully expect guys like Jacob Parker, Jack Bauer, Parker Rhodes, and Peter Mershon to be contributors. Might have Dane Burns back as well depending on how he does this year. If those guys were our team this year we would be really young but we would also be really talented.