[ATrain]

VCU baseball coach Bradley Lecroy is moving to the mountain to be our new head coach. He led the Rams to an NCAA regional appearance this past season.

[aredd33]

He absolutely has his work cut out for him. I think we should probably go into this with 2 years of no expectations realistically.
In my opinion we very likely weren’t going to be good next year anyway, even with Jackson…I just didn’t see the talent on the team or coming in.
Now combine that with the mass exodus of transfers I’ll be pleasantly surprised if we are even close to .500 next year.

I like this hire. I’m excited about him.

[aredd33]

One more thing…I really really hope he keeps scheduling like Jackson did. I loved that we played so many good team every year under Jackson.

[ballcoach15]

I hope he's more outgoing than Jackson and has a better personality. I only seen Jackson 1 time, other than in the stadium.

[AATL]

Very solid hire and done very quickly.

Hopefully he can turn around some of the bleeding via the portal, but expectations the next 1-2 years should be very low. As it stands, it seems like we're staring down a rebuild. Looking forward to welcoming him to town and seeing what he builds.

[ECC29]

Sometimes these coaches carry with them good players they recruit for their previous school. Those good players may want to recommit from VCU and come to LU. The program might be very competitive. However, Nothing is guaranteed of course. But we shall see.

[flameshaw]

Underwhelmed.

[ballcoach15]

The Liberty baseball camp scheduled for August 3-4 has been canceled and money refunded.

[Cider Jim]

I wonder if he will be at the Flames Club luncheon on Thursdsay? County Smoak is catering!

[Ill flame]

https://x.com/LibertyBaseball/status/18 ... 7AMmg&s=19

Here's a good, short introductory interview with Lecroy. Of note he mentioned that he will be retaining a couple people from the current coaching staff. Not sure who that is yet but it should help us bring back a lot of the players that are in the portal.

He has a long time reputation for being one of the best recruiters in the country and mentioned an emphasis on recruiting as his formula for success. This isnt much different than jackson. There's no doubt in my mind he'll bring in quality talent and win here but im not convinced its a clear upgrade. I get Scott Jackson 2.0 vibes from him.

[ballcoach15]

I believe Coach Lecroy will be an upgrade from Jackson..

[jinxy]

Update on roster

https://risewithus5.blogspot.com/2024/0 ... l?spref=tw

Stay tuned. Next 48 hours will be huge. Should keep it updated pretty quickly on my Risewithus twitter.

[jinxy]

Updated. Couple nice additions via the portal.

[jmclaughlin]

Nice work Jinxy!

[AATL]

Agreed! This is fantastic.

[jinxy]

Several more updates. Mostly good. Just click same link. Marsh is back. That was 1 positive.

[AATL]

Great updates as usual.

I'm bummed to see Dye go. He was fun to watch and was going to be an all-conference type here. It will certainly be a year of learning new names and jersey numbers.

Credit to coach, though.. he inherited a mess with extremely poor timing and has done a very nice job finding some pieces with success elsewhere. It's awesome that he's kept the JUCO group committed, and getting Blair back is huge. Hopefully we can retain Early. Not a bad start for what should be considered a year 0.

[cruzan_flame13]

Looks like Coach Lecroy is thinking about adding more scholarships for baseball and requesting the resources to do so. I appreciate that he's continuing the "recruit at a higher level" mentality that he did at VCU. We don't want just just decent players, but the best that could also represent the team well on a national scale. Seems that he's already doing so as mentioned by managing the situation that he was placed in. From the Flames Central Podcast, he seem like a good guy who can connect with the players.

[Ill flame]

Looks like Andrew See will be our new pitching coach. He's had stints as pitching coach at Ohio, Duke, Clemson and most recently Ohio state. Seems like a solid hire to me.

[ballcoach15]

Flames Club hosted a "Meet and Greet" with Coach Lecroy today. He's a much better " people person " than our previous coaches.

[Ill flame]

With less than a month to go until our first game is there any word on what our roster is looking like or what we should expect from this season? I saw we lost a lot of talent to the portal as you would expect anytime there’s a coaching change but i haven’t seen much about what we have coming in.

[jinxy]

Click the link above. It had all the comings and goings. Ill do an update here soon but the lineup will likely start very similar to what the fall games looked like. The starting pitching is whats up in air behind Blair.

[ECC29]

I heard the team has 4 pitchers that throws 95+. Can anyone confirm?