A Sea Of Red

Unless baseball and softball can turn things around quickly, this year would have to be one of the worst years following LU sports I have ever experienced from my perspective and I am still mystified as to why. Is LU "too political" or "too Christian" to be successful. Our athletic facilities are exceptional compared with most of our competition and we flaunt a lot of money but the results are going downhill. That doesn't logically make sense to me. Is too much emphasis being placed on building great facilities and overhyping our sports programs and not enough on getting the right coaches or recruits that end up leaving or getting chased out.

football - Underachieved at 6-5 with 2 bad losses when expectations were sky high after a playoff run and all that talent returning. Next year doesn't look much better on paper.
soccer - Probably their worst year ever in Division 1
volleyball - Continuing a 3 year downward trend after year's of success. This year was unexpectedly bad.
basketball - Improved but still bad. A 7 game winning streak gave us hope.
Women's hoops - Underachieving and trending downward.
Baseball - Trending downward.
Softball - Not improving from last year.
Women's Lacrosse - No comment
Even Ice Hockey was way down this year.

On the plus side:
Women's soccer - Very good last few years but losing their coach
Cross-country and Track - Always solid programs.
Golf - Same as above.
Field Hockey - Our best sports program from a national perspective. Thanks Jodi!
Swimming - Solid program.
Tennis - Improved from the past.

What is the problem. I am also concerned about our unexpected recent loss of personnel from the Football and Women's hoops programs. I don't post often on here as I used to but felt the need to since I am a little concerned about what is going on. Is a change needed at the top? Like a new AD?

Thank you!

Remember that softball is a very very young squad Steve. It's mostly freshmen and sophomores. I've seen some very good things in the midst of a difficult season.
Men's hoops is rebuilding so patience still needs to be exercised.
I'll save my other thoughts for the morning

Softball and Men's Hoops are the least of my worries and there seems to be hope in the next few years that those 2 programs will be winning consistently and competing at a high level this is if we can keep our better recruits here rather than from transferring out. Just not too sure about the other programs and the direction they are heading particularly Women's hoops and Football. Thanks for the comment!

This summer and next year will see a few very hard decisions for JB.

Future looks good in all sports in my opinion, if we can step up a notch in recruiting. We're 2 or 3 players away in every sport. That should be able to fix.

I wanted to wait until all our regular seasons were finished before posting, but overall, the premise of this thread is correct.

If you go by regular season finishes in conference, this year is the second worst year under Jeff Barber, second only to 2013/2014.

Some numbers for you:

Our men's sports finished an average of fourth in the league. This includes three regular season championships (indoor T&F, outdoor T&F, golf). This average finish is the worst under Jeff Barber with the next worst season coming last year at an average finish of 3.56.

Our women's sports finished an average of second in the league. This includes four regular season championships (soccer, tennis, indoor T&F, outdoor T&F). This average finish is the fourth highest under Jeff Barber.

The worst performing teams this year were men's soccer (9th), baseball (8th), men's basketball (6th), men's tennis (5th), and women's lacrosse (5th).

Over the last four years, the best performing teams on campus are (average finish in parenthesis):

Men's Indoor T&F (1)
Men's Outdoor T&F (1)
Men's Cross Country (1.5)
Field Hockey (1)
Women's Outdoor T&F (1.25)
Women's Basketball (1.5)
Women's Indoor T&F (1.75)
Swimming (1.75)

Over the same time frame, the worst performing teams on campus are (average finish in parenthesis):

Men's Soccer (6)
Men's Basketball (9)
Lacrosse (6)
Softball (5.5)
Baseball (4.5)
Men's Tennis (4.25)

Here's the full list of average conference finishes since Jeff Barber's first season:

06/07: 2.71
07/08: 2.35
08/09: 2.65
09/10: 2.35
10/11: 2.39
11/12: 2.72
12/13: 3.00
13/14: 3.10
14/15: 2.75
15/16: 3.05

Here's the full list of men's sports average conference finishes since Jeff Barber's first season:

06/07: 3.11
07/08: 2.56
08/09: 2.44
09/10: 2.56
10/11: 2.22
11/12: 2.67
12/13: 3.44
13/14: 3.00
14/15: 3.56
15/16: 4.00

Here's the full list of women's sports average conference finishes since Jeff Barber's first season:

06/07: 2.25
07/08: 2.13
08/09: 2.88
09/10: 2.13
10/11: 2.56
11/12: 2.78
12/13: 2.64
13/14: 3.18
14/15: 2.09
15/16: 2.20

Note: I didn't include Jeff's first since months at the end of 2006. In the case of a regular season tie, I used the rankings going into the conference tournament.

I think you meant the last grouping of Average Conference Finishes to be women and not men. In either case, it looks like the men have been the issues over the last four years in particular.

The last one was supposed to be women's sports. That was a copy and paste mistake. My bad on that.

I agree about the last four years and the men's sports. The strange coincidence (?) is that those results started happening as we started focusing on buildings and moving to FBS. I don't know if the two are related but the timing is interesting.

Jonathan Carone wrote:The last one was supposed to be women's sports. That was a copy and paste mistake. My bad on that.

I agree about the last four years and the men's sports. The strange coincidence (?) is that those results started happening as we started focusing on buildings and moving to FBS. I don't know if the two are related but the timing is interesting.

Those results also correspond with our MBB program falling into an abyss. Averaging in 10th and 11th place finishes every year definitely brings the average up. Then it gets a bit better this year and baseball and football fall off.

So if you made basketball average 5th in the league for the past four years, it brings the results to:

2012/2013: 2.89 (increase of .55)
2013/2014: 2.44 (increase of .56)
2014/2015: 2.89 (increase of .67)
2015/2016: 4.00 (the same)

So yeah, basketball hurts us, but those numbers are still not great.

olldflame wrote:

Jonathan Carone wrote:The last one was supposed to be women's sports. That was a copy and paste mistake. My bad on that.

I agree about the last four years and the men's sports. The strange coincidence (?) is that those results started happening as we started focusing on buildings and moving to FBS. I don't know if the two are related but the timing is interesting.

Those results also correspond with our MBB program falling into an abyss. Averaging in 10th and 11th place finishes every year definitely brings the average up. Then it gets a bit better this year and baseball and football fall off.

Yeah it fell into an abyss, during/right after a massive expansion of their training facility behind/under the Vines Center. The timing remains interesting to me.

I think the recruiting success we have had since Ritchie's arrival is an indication that our new facility is nothing but a positive. More than one of the incoming players have stated that being able to train in high major quality facilities while attending a school who's mission they believe in was a factor in their decision. Hopefully the turnaround will continue. I'm very upbeat about what is happening there. WBB I'm a little worried about, even though they actually tied for first this year. A lot of graduation losses and a very different looking roster. Big adjustments to make IMHO for a HC who seems to be pretty set in his ways. I Hope he fools us all.

Even with all these numbers, we still swept the all sports awards for the conference.

Here's the link to the BSC site:

http://www.bigsouthsports.com/entries/l ... s-trophies

Wow. That's pretty impressive, considering we were burdened with beautiful new state-of-the art facilities and the inevitable complacency and sense of entitlement that goes along with them. lol

Hey, I understand that most of us care mostly about the 3 major men's sports, and we were down in 2 of them this year. Not happy about that. I even think the "sense of entitlement" thing may have played a factor in football. Hopefully the dose of reality we got there will prevent any recurrence. Nonetheless, this news does make the title of this thread kinda ironic.

It kinda does...if this is what a BAD year in LU sports is like, If we can get our "Big 3 (Big 4 if you separate men's and women's hoops)" sports on track in 2016-17 with CCU in the SBC next year (football independent)...this could be quite the year for LU next year.

LU won the Sasser Cup this year: http://www.liberty.edu/flames/index.cfm ... 31&TeamID=

Entitlement?................................... Laughable.

giving the champs their due: @LibertyFlames

Men's Golf, Women's Soccer, M&W Indoor T/F, M&W Outdoor T/F

LU sports not off to a good start at all this year. 1-8 combined record with the only win, MSoccer over lowly Howard. Loses to Kennesaw State (WVBall) and UMBC (WSoccer) have me a little concerned about things. Things don't look to promising thus far.

Oops!

THey lost Cider...

THat said, Volleyball is a very young squad so I give them a bit of a pass, and field hockey is making a major step up in competition as well.