Quote Originally Posted by Todd4State View Post
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.
The very few 8th-9th graders that end up being studs and don't go the draft will be far offset by all the guys we don't have to fill holes for wasting our time on guys that go pro. Again if you can't sign a guy by recruiting him hard from 10th-12th grades you are never signing him anyways.

Our floor would be USM's best if we focus on dirtbags and low draft risks. Our baseball history, park, SEC etc.. will recruit a few extra better players than a USM team would see so the very worst we'd be is USM at their best. Once we are consistently top 3 in the SEC every year we will see a domino effect start to happen where our previous years success will land us even more of these guys. We just have to get the train rolling and we do it with dirtbags. If we can't make regionals every single year and supers every two years with the ballpark we got and our history there is a serious problem with our approach.