[olldflame]

I think Bean returns. Hopefully he can find strike zone.

A new pitching coach may be needed on the mountain.

Bean has ML potential and has regressed from conference FOY to a total non factor in 2 years. He would be a fool to return to Liberty if there is not a new pitching coach, but I will be surprised if that happens, so my guess is he looks to sign a pro contract, even if not drafted. I suspect some team will pick him late though. His talent is not a secret.

[olldflame]

Let's not forget Brandon Tillman, the football signee who will also be playing baseball and had an amazing Senior year on the diamond. An OF of Artis, Lee and Tillman would be awesome. Not many balls are going to get in the gaps with that kind of speed.

[LUDad]

Yesterday, I noticed Yacyk choking up on the bat after the second strike. Has he always done this? Curious as to if this is something that played apart in his higher batting average and reduced strickouts.

[olldflame]

In our tourney run, only 1.1 innings were pitched by a Senior (Herndon) and I doubt if any of the Juniors will be drafted. That's a good nucleus to build on, and then we have several pitchers in this recruiting class. If just a couple of them can be contributors, I think our pitching can be greatly improved.

Tourney Pitchers and innings pitched

DeGroat (15)
Mitchell (4)
Scott (4.1)
Clouse (3.2)
Quarterly (5.1)
Grabowski (1.1)
Herndon (1.1)

[olldflame]

Yesterday, I noticed Yacyk choking up on the bat after the second strike. Has he always done this? Curious as to if this is something that played apart in his higher batting average and reduced strickouts.

I'm all for reducing strikeouts, but it seems a shame for a batter with Andrew's power to EVER choke up on the bat. That may explain his 21 doubles (among the tops in the country) with only 7 HR from a guy who can hit it about as far as anyone when he connects with a full swing.

[Jonathan Carone]

Before we get too excited about the talent coming in next year, remember it was said this was possibly the best and deepest team Toman has had while at Liberty and we saw how that turned out.

Liberty’s lineup looks deep and balanced. The defense should be a real strength, and the pitching staff is loaded with options. For a while last year, Liberty was in the mix to host a regional at its beautiful new ballpark, before its late-season fade dashed those hopes. This might be the best team Toman has had in his nine years as head coach, and it has a real chance to finish the job last year’s team could not.

Source: D1Baseball.com

[LUDad]

Before we get too excited about the talent coming in next year, remember it was said this was possibly the best and deepest team Toman has had while at Liberty and we saw how that turned out.

Liberty’s lineup looks deep and balanced. The defense should be a real strength, and the pitching staff is loaded with options. For a while last year, Liberty was in the mix to host a regional at its beautiful new ballpark, before its late-season fade dashed those hopes. This might be the best team Toman has had in his nine years as head coach, and it has a real chance to finish the job last year’s team could not.

Source: D1Baseball.com

I think we saw how deep and balanced that team was during the strech run. Just a couple pitches away from a regional despite loosing ace pitcher late in season and having three other projected starters with season long command issues. If Beam and Stafford come back strong next year and no one regresses from our season ending form, the sky is the limit.

[flameshaw]

Before we get too excited about the talent coming in next year, remember it was said this was possibly the best and deepest team Toman has had while at Liberty and we saw how that turned out.

Liberty’s lineup looks deep and balanced. The defense should be a real strength, and the pitching staff is loaded with options. For a while last year, Liberty was in the mix to host a regional at its beautiful new ballpark, before its late-season fade dashed those hopes. This might be the best team Toman has had in his nine years as head coach, and it has a real chance to finish the job last year’s team could not.

Source: D1Baseball.com

Kinda like the Tarhole predictions for 2016 courtesy of UNC Baseball Blog:

Prediction:

Despite the uncertainty surrounding the team, the Heels still have enough blue chip talents to be a serious team in ACC play. The Tar Heels are picked to finish third in the Coastal Division by the media, and that seems like a realistic finish for them. Virginia and Miami are the class of the division while Carolina should be in a battle for third with Duke and Georgia Tech. The Heels will rely on their pitching staff to carry them through most of the season and need to stay healthy all around if they are to have any shot of postseason better than last year. Personally, I think that they are in a bitter fight with Georgia Tech for third in the ACC Coastal before a late push from their freshmen helps them lock up that number three spot heading into the ACC tournament. The keys for this season are health of the veterans, consistency and improvement from Bukauskas and Morgan, and quality play from freshmen that improves as the season progresses and they adjust to college play. If these three things happen, then Carolina can challenge for the Coastal title and maybe even make a deep postseason run to Super Regionals.


The team didn't even make the ACC Tournament, but they "maybe even make a deep postseason run to Super Regionals" Maybe they didn't quite do as well as advertised either. Guess what? It happens every year, in every sport, where teams don't do as well as the "experts" think. I suspect it has more to do with the "experts" ability to see into the future than the teams ability to play to the level predicted. I guess UNC should be looking to get better coaches and a new AD as well? Sheeesh.

[jinxy]

The team was anything but deep. To argue otherwise is silly. We couldn't find a 3b option all year and we had no more than 3 reliable pitchers at any point. Degroat came on strong the last month but the damage was done. We crushed the ball in the first 3 games and that's why we moved on.

Next year we do have talent coming in. All the recruiting sites say so, not toman. Last year artis McKenna and trevillian were the talked about recruits and we lost 2 of them. This year we have kiriloff, Lee, locklear and Morris all the top 200. If we can come away with 3 of those guys I would be ecstatic. Lee is an electric 2 way athlete and can touch 90 from the left side. Locklear could well be the starting shortstop next year. Morris has 5 tool talent if his gaps power turns to doubles. Kid has a beautiful swing from the right side. We also have the top ranked catcher from South Carolina. I do by the hype on this class.

[krh44]

The team was anything but deep. To argue otherwise is silly. We couldn't find a 3b option all year and we had no more than 3 reliable pitchers at any point. Degroat came on strong the last month but the damage was done. We crushed the ball in the first 3 games and that's why we moved on.

Next year we do have talent coming in. All the recruiting sites say so, not toman. Last year artis McKenna and trevillian were the talked about recruits and we lost 2 of them. This year we have kiriloff, Lee, locklear and Morris all the top 200. If we can come away with 3 of those guys I would be ecstatic. Lee is an electric 2 way athlete and can touch 90 from the left side. Locklear could well be the starting shortstop next year. Morris has 5 tool talent if his gaps power turns to doubles. Kid has a beautiful swing from the right side. We also have the top ranked catcher from South Carolina. I do by the hype on this class.

I seen one mock draft with Alex as high as #12! I think that we will be lucky to get two of them. We will need to get the pitching figured out before the last 2 weeks of the season or it will not matter. I think we have a good nucleus but need some star power in the line up. Didn't have the Seiz or Cordell this year like in the past.

[flameshaw]

Like a previous LU AD said to me one time, "they are all great until they get here". I have always tried to remember that. It is very difficult to determine what is going to happen to a young person between high school and college. Just like it is difficult to determine what kind of pro athlete, a college athlete is going to become. There are tons of first rounders that don't make it. Every now and then you find a Kurt Warner that was never drafted, that should make the HOF, or a Tom Brady drafted in the late rounds, etc.
Hopefully all of our teams will be better next year and we don't have any wtf football games like Monmouth and GW. Baseball and basketball are a little different, since one person can make a tremendous difference in the outcome of the games, not so likely in football.

[olldflame]

With the season over, it's time to look ahead. I understand that some take a skeptical view, but some of us also believe there are reasons for optimism about next season. Not the least of those reasons are the group of returners we will have from the team which just came within one bad pitch and one coaching gaff of a very possible regional berth against one of the top teams in the country. Yes, recruiting is always a bit of a crap shoot. This class could end up being decimated by the draft, and there is no guarantee those who do arrive on campus will live up to their HS plaudits, but there definitely seems to be as much talent or more than I can recall in past years. Only time will tell.

Jinxy, I have to say it is hard for me to believe you could look at what the team did this past week and say we only were in the final because we "crushed the ball" in the first 3 games. Against Radford, yes, but 4 runs total against the 2 and 3 seeds in games 1 and 2 was very solid pitching.

[adam42381]

Like a previous LU AD said to me one time, "they are all great until they get here". I have always tried to remember that. It is very difficult to determine what is going to happen to a young person between high school and college. Just like it is difficult to determine what kind of pro athlete, a college athlete is going to become. There are tons of first rounders that don't make it. Every now and then you find a Kurt Warner that was never drafted, that should make the HOF, or a Tom Brady drafted in the late rounds, etc.
Hopefully all of our teams will be better next year and we don't have any wtf football games like Monmouth and GW. Baseball and basketball are a little different, since one person can make a tremendous difference in the outcome of the games, not so likely in football.

There's a coaching joke in there somewhere.

[ballcoach15]

With Coastal Carolina gone we should "own" the BSC. We need to beat the girly schools . HP. Rad.and LW.

[adam42381]

With Coastal Carolina gone we should "own" the BSC. We need to beat the girly schools . HP. Rad.and LW.

Do you hate women? Seems to be quite a bit of misogyny in your posts lately.

[Cider Jim]

Ballcoach just picks on the schools that DON'T have the manly sport of football.

[ballcoach15]

True, I do not like schools that do not field a football team. They "water down" the conference.

[olldflame]

True, I do not like schools that do not field a football team. They "water down" the conference.

Do you have any idea what it costs to maintain a D1 football program (even at the FCS level)? Not every school can afford it, and the idea that somehow those schools who can't should be deported to their own non-football conferences is ridiculous; or are you suggesting that they drop all sports if they can't afford football?

As far as watering down is concerned, I believe an argument can be made that the run of success Winthrop had under Marshall in basketball contributed as much or more to the overall profile of the conference as anything any football school has done.

[ballcoach15]

The Big South is divided into 2 groups:

Group 1: Coastal Carolina, Liberty, Charleston Southern
Group 2 : Everyone else

[BJWilliams]

ballcoach...smh...I understand that you have an opinion and that sharing opinions is the beauty of the message board...but you do realize that the majority of your opinions are downright indefensible? And Im not even talking about your clearly sexist and misogynistic comments that you directed toward Longwood's coach and still have not apologized for? (and no what you posted was NOT an apology)

[olldflame]

The Big South is divided into 2 groups:

Group 1: Coastal Carolina, Liberty, Charleston Southern
Group 2 : Everyone else

1. Coastal Carolina is in the Sun Belt Conference.

2. In everything other than the last 2 years on the football field and decent play over the years in MBB, Liberty and CSU could not be further apart. CSU has the worst facilities in the conference, and their performance in almost all other sports is pretty bad. When Jamie Chadwell leaves (I can't believe he is still there) they will be pretty much bad at everything again

With the beach chickens gone, our primary competition for overall excellence comes from High Point and Winthrop.

[ballcoach15]

Hopefully with CCU gone next season, LU can rule BSC .

[olldflame]

Hopefully with CCU gone next season, LU can rule BSC .

In football, despite their limited resources, CSU will be tough to beat as long as Chadwell is there. He is a special coach and a perfect fit for them. Kennesaw State has a lot going for it, and is going to be good, maybe as early as this year.

In MBB Winthrop and UNCA look like our top challengers. Rebuilding year for HP.

I see Radford rebounding from a down year in baseball and HP, Winthrop and Longwood should be solid.

This was a down year overall, but I am cautiously optimistic we can turn it around in enough sports to be back at the top next year. Obviously, not having Coastal to deal with will make the job easier in a number of sports.

[Chippy]

I think Bean returns. Hopefully he can find strike zone.

A new pitching coach may be needed on the mountain.

Bean has ML potential and has regressed from conference FOY to a total non factor in 2 years. He would be a fool to return to Liberty if there is not a new pitching coach, but I will be surprised if that happens, so my guess is he looks to sign a pro contract, even if not drafted. I suspect some team will pick him late though. His talent is not a secret.

He has put on 25lbs since his Fr. year when he was really good. From 6'5" 225 to 250. Just sayin.

[ballcoach15]

That could be cause of his wildness. He looked more of a "thrower" than a pitcher this season.