Now look, I deliberately left his name out of the title, because I don't want to give him credit, but I unfortunately made my way over to ED during a long car ride this morning. I saw a post where Peach Fuzz actually made a pretty good point......"This is a Lemon team with a little more talent". That's absolutely right.
First off, he probably said that because he likes Lemon and all. But facts are, Lemon wasn't any different from any other baseball coach is X/O stuff - his problem was recruiting. What did OC do immediately? Brought in better players and poof, here we are likely to host while last year we were on the wrong side of the bubble. And that's all this is - talent. There isn't much strategy in baseball. The sport has undergone really one big shift and that was to the analytics. Baseball is just baseball. You have to pitch and slug, period. You guys give WAY too much credit to whatever this coaching and development you say it is we need. A college baseball coach's job is to assemble the best group of players he can, and get them to play fundamental ball. There used to be a little scheming back when we had the dead bats and old balls, but that's been remedied as well.
All you have to do is look at any travel ball team. We did this ourselves, put together a team after a rec season and a few all star tournaments. Took 5-6 of the kids who wanted to play. Filled out the rest. Were average for a few years. Eventually got serious and filled out the rest of the team with kids who were serious and could play, kids that started taking the core 5-6 kids spots. Bam, we start winning tournaments. It ain't because the coaching dads suddenly got better. The dads got out of the way and let the good players play.
All this attitude, this that and the other, this team isn't clutch, blah blah. Some of it plays into it, but unless you're just straight up toxic it's literally ALL about players. Our 2016 team was a bunch of 'I' guys and supposedly had a bunch of whiny 17s, but guess what, they were good whiny 17s and if not for Bobby 17ing Dalbec we win the national championship that year.
There's much more room to innovate in football and basketball but at the end of the day what did Saban do? Raised the talent profile. What did Cohen do when he got here in 2009? All he talked about was recruiting, and needing two good classes back to back. What did Vitello do at Tennessee and why he sucks now at the Giants?
First off, he probably said that because he likes Lemon and all. But facts are, Lemon wasn't any different from any other baseball coach is X/O stuff - his problem was recruiting. What did OC do immediately? Brought in better players and poof, here we are likely to host while last year we were on the wrong side of the bubble. And that's all this is - talent. There isn't much strategy in baseball. The sport has undergone really one big shift and that was to the analytics. Baseball is just baseball. You have to pitch and slug, period. You guys give WAY too much credit to whatever this coaching and development you say it is we need. A college baseball coach's job is to assemble the best group of players he can, and get them to play fundamental ball. There used to be a little scheming back when we had the dead bats and old balls, but that's been remedied as well.
All you have to do is look at any travel ball team. We did this ourselves, put together a team after a rec season and a few all star tournaments. Took 5-6 of the kids who wanted to play. Filled out the rest. Were average for a few years. Eventually got serious and filled out the rest of the team with kids who were serious and could play, kids that started taking the core 5-6 kids spots. Bam, we start winning tournaments. It ain't because the coaching dads suddenly got better. The dads got out of the way and let the good players play.
All this attitude, this that and the other, this team isn't clutch, blah blah. Some of it plays into it, but unless you're just straight up toxic it's literally ALL about players. Our 2016 team was a bunch of 'I' guys and supposedly had a bunch of whiny 17s, but guess what, they were good whiny 17s and if not for Bobby 17ing Dalbec we win the national championship that year.
There's much more room to innovate in football and basketball but at the end of the day what did Saban do? Raised the talent profile. What did Cohen do when he got here in 2009? All he talked about was recruiting, and needing two good classes back to back. What did Vitello do at Tennessee and why he sucks now at the Giants?
