(02-14-2024, 09:47 AM)Replying to DawgNatty
That's exactly right on Vandy. Hard to compete with their set up. On top of that, they've cherry picked out state bad for last 5-6 years on baseball talent. Still, as you say...there is zero excuse.
I'll say this, we were not great at evaluating talent with the last coaching regime. We will see if we've improved. (this is the basis of my comment above.)
Hell, I could pick 5-6 kids myself that are playing at schools like UNC Aiken that are better than half our team from last year.
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I think it all goes back to the AD and no accountability or expectations of success from the baseball coach. Being baseball coach at Georgia is a "money for nothing" job. As long as a coach has a winning record for the season, his job is pretty safe as long as he doesn't have any team scandal or get in the news for doing anything bad off the field. With no accountability and no expectations it is easy to be lazy in recruiting and evaluation of talent. The state is full of baseball talent and pretty much all of the top talent goes somewhere besides Georgia. Of course the fact we won't even let out of state players pay in state tuition and we can't give them full scholarships doesn't make recruiting out of state any easier.
We are playing Ga Southern on March 5th here and I'll be at the game. I won't be surprised if Southern beats us (again). USC Aiken and Augusta University both have decent baseball teams and I wouldn't be shocked if either one of them beat us if we faced them.
Our baseball team has been mediocre for a very long time. My father played in the late '50s and he said he was shocked at how bad the Georgia baseball team was when he arrived. He said his HS team would have beaten them like a drum. Jim Whatley was the coach when he was on the team and he said his HS coach was light years better than Whatley. Whatley coached for 24 years and ended up 9 games over .500.