On PG- that's inconsequential to anything related to our baseball program. I wouldn't be surprised if even the worst JUCO players have PG profiles. It is what it is. And sometimes it's that a player gets a profile from playing a travel ball team that plays in a PG tournament. To me, nowadays playing on a reputable travel ball team is probably even more important than going to a PG showcase. The travel ball teams play in tournaments/showcases at Dudy Noble too and that's where we sometimes find players. I will say us taking a hard stance about not recruiting anyone that went to a PG showcase would be like what we did with Rick Ray and AAU except maybe even worse. I don't think anyone wants to go there.

On recruiting 8th-9th graders. That's a double edged sword because some of those 8th graders turn out to be pretty good players. Our fans would be upset if we didn't recruit and offer Blaze Jordan right now because he's a freshman while he committed to Ole Miss because they recruited him harder. You can say it's a "waste of time" but the fact of the matter is all of the elite programs are doing it and it's because if you don't show a player interest early on it can be hard if not impossible to catch back up later. That's one of the many things that burned Polk back when it was just sophomores. Now, there has been talk of the NCAA making it illegal to take commitments from players that are in 8th-9th grade but I don't think anything will change unless that passes. The SOLUTION is what Shotgun said- make sure you leave enough room for players that mature later. We'll revisit if the rules change.

On dirtbags- A lot of this is knee jerk reaction. If all we recruit are "dirtbags" we're going to end up with a USM quality team in the SEC. And you may be thinking- "Hey! That's what I want! Look how they kicked our ass!" Well, that's just looking at the moment and forgetting the fact that we have beat them head to head every year since 2016- meaning this weekend if the first time their juniors have ever had a winning record over us. Their seniors got a win back in 2015 when we were awful. Also, aside from this year we have beaten them every year we have had a winning record except for once since Cohen took over in 2009. They have one CWS appearance and I believe they missed the postseason altogether between 2012-2015. What happened this weekend would be like Kentucky with a bunch of freshmen losing to an Eastern Kentucky team that has a bunch of fifth year seniors and was fired up to play them because Kentucky knocked them out of the Big Dance the year before (hypothetically speaking). Now while the EKU guys would get to talk about that one time they beat Kentucky their overall ceiling as individual players is not going to be as high. Because what is going to happen is the player from Kentucky are going to get better and by the time they are the same age as the EKU guys- the Kentucky guys are going to be better over the long term in terms of collegiate success and a pro future.

So, if we had a dirtbag team- we would be good in the SEC about once every five years and I don't think anyone wants that. USM, South Alabama, and whoever else may be better "on the field" and at the moment than LSU, Vandy, and whoever else. But in the BIG picture- who among those teams I mentioned has been to Omaha more and has more National Titles? So, even if we lose to USM once every five years- I would definitely trade that for LSU/Vandy/Florida success overall in the long run.

About our recruiting- What Cohen has done with us is about like what Jackie did as far as JUCO's go. And it's really messed up our roster to the point where we're starting about 4-5 freshmen now. The reason USM is good right now is because they have a lot of upperclassmen. We need to get to the point where we have upperclassmen every year and aren't having to rely on freshmen once every five years. You do that by balancing out your class- not signing any pitchers this past year is Hevesy level recruiting or worse. We need to have contingency plans for guys that get drafted and leave that doesn't involve JUCO. Cann is supposed to have all of these scouting connections at his disposal and if our class is about to get gutted he needs to figure who exactly is leaving and replace them ASAP with a guy that is good but will come to school. If band nerd me can figure out that player x is likely going to leave by talking to people and reading articles on the Internet- I don't understand what the problem is with Cohen or Cann on that. Maybe it's them being optimistic but I'd rather go after a back up plan just in case and have an extra SS than none at all.

Now that said, I do think Cann is balancing out our classes better which is good to see. And I don't mind going after the higher end draft pick guys. People wonder how Vandy gets some of their pitchers- well, they recruit them first and get them to commit. That's the first step. We have several guys on our team now that were drafted- Jordan Anderson and Ashcraft were draft risks and we got them. So, we've done it before and we will do it again with other players.