(06-10-2015 11:48 AM)mrbig Wrote:  

(06-10-2015 09:43 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  the difference between our Omaha-bound 2002 - 2008 teams and many of our 2009 - '15 teams is not as great as some here want you to believe.

I'm with Walt on this one. Rice clearly has been a little worse 2009-2015 than 2002-2008. But it isn't like the team has fallen off a cliff, the team has usually been *this* short of moving into that next tier. And as I have said before, there have been different weaknesses in different years, which is less concerning to me than if the team had the same problem every year that it was failing to correct.

2009 - great offense and good weekend starters, but no bullpen. No reliever with 15+ IP had an ERA <4.35 or averaged >1 K/IP. Should have been national seed and bad luck getting matched with #1 seed and eventual national champion LSU for Super Regional.
2010 - great offense and OK bullpen, but poor starters. Top 5 SP combined for 4.30 ERA and only 6.0 K/9.
2011 - mediocre offense (Rendon's injury really hurt), but great pitching. #8 national seed team was very good and elimination in regional was shocking.
2012 - decent offense and great pitching. Surprised this team didn't do better. I think this was the team that left a ton of runners on base toward the end of the season.
2013 - decent offense and great starting pitching, but no bullpen behind Lemond. Eliminated in 2 heart-breaking losses at NC State where Rice lead going into the 9th in both games.
2014 - mediocre offense and good pitching. Team hurt by Stephens' injury.
2015 - below-average offense, solid pitching, horrible defense. Team hurt by Duplantier's injury.

Honestly, I think the 2009 and 2011 teams were "Omaha quality" teams. The 2010 team was the worst to me in the last 7 years, the starting pitching just wasn't good. The 2012 & 2013 teams were not quite as talented overall and needed to get hot at the right time to make a run (and the 2013 team almost did). The last 2 years the team was without its pre-season ace and unsurprisingly fell short. Sometimes a team can overcome losing its ace, but those teams haven't.

I'm not making excuses because I do 100% agree that Rice baseball is down a touch from the insanely successful 1997-2008 run. But we haven't fallen as far as some of you seem to believe either. My biggest 2 concerns have been the general inability to get weekend sweeps against mediocre opponents (not that Rice never does it, but much less frequently than the good-old days) and the team seems to lack that killer-edge the past ~4 years that used to be a hallmark of Coach Graham's teams.

I would add that the last few teams also seem to be less confident than earlier ones. It seemed like this year when things went bad they went bad in a big way. The early 2000 clubs all seemed to bounce back after bad innings which I attribute to confidence.

This year's team was more tightly wound or something. They'd unravel like a rubber band ball in pressure situations. The extra innnings of the UH regional game was about the only time I saw them taking pressure in stride and sure enough they won.

The Second Baptist job will probably be good for Lance to learn coaching. He gets a chance now to be a head coach and do it where there is less pressure than college or the pros.

Wayne Graham started out the same way. After pro ball, Wayne returned to finish school. After school, he coached high school. Later, Wayne went on to San Jacinto and Rice.

Rice-ex John Pope has Cy Ranch playing for the state title today.

Love the the old English "R" on their uniforms (for "Ranch")--seems like Coach Pope is paying homage to his Rice roots!