- March 23rd, 2014, 9:49 pm
#449949
SuperJon wrote:A couple of things stuck out to me in that article. The first, and in my opinion the biggest, is this quote:To say you were a Toman critic would be putting it nicely Jon...but I will definitely agree that this is a very different team AND a very different coach. I really think that the turning point came in that DH against CCU in the Big South tournament last year. Getting that first win and breaking the losing streak really did a number on the team's mindset as well as Toman's and it carried over to the second game. Even after the difficult start this year, the guys didn't tighten up and start forcing things in order to reverse the early trend. Now we are 18-7, have a couple VERY quality wins in ODU and a sweep of Kent State, and I think we have a good chance even against Tech coming up tomorrow. A win there and we have a chance to be at 20 wins before the end of March (have to wonder when was the last time that happened), and I really think we have a chance to be favored in every game from here on out (including the CCU series which I think is graduation weekend) save two (UNC and Virginia).
“Honestly, it’s just looking for a fastball and adjusting to whatever else is coming,” Sankey said. “Then I just try to work the middle of the field. I got a changeup and I was able to hit it through the hole.”In the past, we just tried to pull everything and hit it as hard as we could. Credit the staff for making the changes and adopting this approach. I truly believe it's this approach that's allowed us to get so many 2-strike and 2-out hits this year.
Liberty has won 12 of its last 13 since starting the season 6-6...After tinkering with the lineup the first 8-10 games, which Toman said he would before the season even began, he hasn't done much in terms of huge changes since. He's found a pretty consistent lineup with a few tweaks here and there and the team has been able to gel. In the past, if a guy had a bad game, he was jerked out of the lineup for the next couple of games. That hasn't happened this year.
“We made up for not sweeping the last conference team,” Toman said. “We had an opportunity to and we didn’t, and we felt like we let that one slip away. Once you win those first two, you want to win the third. I’m proud of the guys for finally getting over the hump a little bit with that. That was good.”This sounds small, but admitting that we've let that third game of a sweep get away is a big step to getting past it. He's stressing the importance of getting the sweep.
Everyone on here knows I've been a huge Toman critic, but from the Big South tournament of last year until now he has coached differently. He has been much more loose. He's coached like the guy that he is when players come on their visits. He's given guys a chance to own this team and lead this team. A perfect example is allowing Grauer to call pitches on a regular basis. He trusts his players to go out there and make the plays in a way that he hasn't trusted his previous team.
I don't know if he purposefully made some of these small changes or if they're just a matter of learning how to be a head coach and experience, but regardless of the reason, he's doing a great job with this team this year. We will go where he leads us, and if he continues to lead like this, I've got no doubt we'll be in a regional this year.
Last edited by BJWilliams on March 24th, 2014, 8:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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