Are you sure we're funding all 11.7 scholarships? The last I heard, we were funding 9 of the 11.7.asu66 wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 11:51 pmFWIW, I love every kid and every coach in our program and want the best of everything for them.
Our baseball program is fully funded. That's NCAA-speak meaning that App offers the D-I baseball maximum of 11.7 scholarships which can be divided among a maximum of 27 players. We have a fine baseball facility and access to an indoor practice facility. I don't subscribe to the "cold weather school" excuse for our low winning percentage because we play and lose to other cold weather teams about every year. It's about talent (recruiting) and coaching (player development) and the job just isn't getting done to an acceptable level of success. I'm not into coach firings with this mini-rant, but I am strongly implying that some of the things our folks are doing aren't working. It's high time that they try some new and/or different approaches to see if they can turn the good ship around for next season.
For the record, I know that we aren't Mississippi State or Vanderbilt or Michigan or Florida or UNC or Wake or even Coastal Carolina...but we can be App State with a much more respectable and competitive program than is the case now.
As for your other points:
Facilities - our baseball facilities are below average for the SoCon and BigSouth. They're at the bottom of the SunBelt.
Cold weather - it hurts, but its an excuse that we have to be able to overcome, it isn't going to change. With that said, people talk like we've had 5-7 year stretches of winning records in the past 30 years under multiple coaches...that's just not the case. How many consecutive winning seasons have we had in the last 35 years? ...I'll wait.
Recruiting - I agree
Coaching/player development - I agree. Our pitching coach has been at App for 7+ seasons (holdover from Billy's staff), and this continues to be a weakness.
I'm a big fan of Kermit's and believe he's the right coach to lead our program, but I also believe he needs to upgrade his staff if he's going to compete in the top half of the conference year in and year out.