Updating their rankings from 2015, D1Baseball has been counting down (10 programs at a time) for the past week, and Rice just came in at #23, down a tick from #20 two years ago, and just ahead of UH (#27), Clemson, NC State, Arizona State and ULaLa...

https://d1baseball.com/rankings/top-100-...s-21-30-2/

Premium content, so I'll only provide the Rice writeup below, which is, IMO, on point in almost every respect...

Quote:23. Rice
2015 Rank: 20. Rice finished sixth in Conference USA and went just 33-31 overall this spring, its lowest win total since Wayne Graham’s first year in 1992. Yet even in a down year, the Owls still found a way to extend their regionals streak to 23 straight years by winning the C-USA tournament, marking the 22nd time in 23 years they have captured either a regular-season or conference tournament title. Graham’s sparkling legacy also includes 10 super regional appearances, seven trips to Omaha and the 2003 national title. That’s an incredible body of work at a program that had never even been to a regional before 1995. The Owls deserve credit for remaining very competitive annually and keeping their postseason streak alive — that’s no small feat. But there’s no escaping the fact that the Owls fallen from the ranks of the elite over the last decade. Their last CWS trip was in 2008, and they’ve won just one regional in the last eight years, in 2013. Their last 40-win season came in 2014. There’s nothing wrong with winning 37 games and making a regional, but Rice fans became conditioned to expect more by the program’s run of six Omaha appearances in eight years from 2002-08. Graham is a living legend who has earned the right to coach as long as he wants, especially since he keeps on making the postseason — but the 81-year-old is no spring chicken, and he can’t coach forever (right?). He had to hire two new assistants this offseason, so there’s no obvious succession plan in place, leaving the long-term future of the program in some question. Still, Graham has built a program that should endure as a national contender long after he’s gone. Reckling Park remains a wonderful facility nestled on a beautiful campus at an elite academic institution with loads of institutional aid at its disposal. And the Owls have done a great job mining for talent in the baseball-rich Houston area for a long time now. This program still has a whole lot going for it.

Spot on in my opinion.

For those interested, here's the other CUSA schools appearing in D1's rankings...

#23 Rice
#33 Southern Miss
#51 FAU
#79 ODU
#91 Louisiana Tech
#95 FIU

Personally, I think USM should have cracked the Top 30 based on their past two seasons, and CWS appearance 5 years ago.

FTR, their methodology:

Quote:For the purpose of this exercise, we don’t care what happened in the 1970s or 80s, or even the 90s — that’s ancient history to a potential recruit in 2015. Tradition is nice, but it’s more important to establish a tradition of consistent winning in the last decade, and especially in the last five years. Our ultimate goal here is to identify the programs in the best shape right now, with an eye toward the next five to 10 years.

So we began by awarding programs points for making regionals and having postseason success in the last five years, and a fewer amount of points for success between six and 10 years ago. That gave us a starting point; then editors Aaron Fitt and Kendall Rogers made adjustments based on evaluations of coaching staff quality and stability, facilities, scholarship/financial aid situation, conference dynamics, momentum, and recruiting and player development proficiency. As the chairman of the Division I Baseball Committee likes to say every year, it’s more of an art than a science, but we tried to take many factors into consideration and debated our rankings internally at length. Reasonable minds will disagree on the rankings ...

(09-20-2017 12:00 PM)Almadenmike Wrote:  FTR, their methodology:

Quote:For the purpose of this exercise, we don’t care what happened in the 1970s or 80s, or even the 90s — that’s ancient history to a potential recruit in 2015. Tradition is nice, but it’s more important to establish a tradition of consistent winning in the last decade, and especially in the last five years. Our ultimate goal here is to identify the programs in the best shape right now, with an eye toward the next five to 10 years.

So we began by awarding programs points for making regionals and having postseason success in the last five years, and a fewer amount of points for success between six and 10 years ago. That gave us a starting point; then editors Aaron Fitt and Kendall Rogers made adjustments based on evaluations of coaching staff quality and stability, facilities, scholarship/financial aid situation, conference dynamics, momentum, and recruiting and player development proficiency. As the chairman of the Division I Baseball Committee likes to say every year, it’s more of an art than a science, but we tried to take many factors into consideration and debated our rankings internally at length. Reasonable minds will disagree on the rankings ...

So we can expect to drop more as our "postseason success" from 2007-8 fades over the event horizon?

(09-20-2017 12:42 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(09-20-2017 12:00 PM)Almadenmike Wrote:  FTR, their methodology:

Quote:For the purpose of this exercise, we don’t care what happened in the 1970s or 80s, or even the 90s — that’s ancient history to a potential recruit in 2015. Tradition is nice, but it’s more important to establish a tradition of consistent winning in the last decade, and especially in the last five years. Our ultimate goal here is to identify the programs in the best shape right now, with an eye toward the next five to 10 years.

So we began by awarding programs points for making regionals and having postseason success in the last five years, and a fewer amount of points for success between six and 10 years ago. That gave us a starting point; then editors Aaron Fitt and Kendall Rogers made adjustments based on evaluations of coaching staff quality and stability, facilities, scholarship/financial aid situation, conference dynamics, momentum, and recruiting and player development proficiency. As the chairman of the Division I Baseball Committee likes to say every year, it’s more of an art than a science, but we tried to take many factors into consideration and debated our rankings internally at length. Reasonable minds will disagree on the rankings ...

So we can expect to drop more as our "postseason success" from 2007-8 fades over the event horizon?

My read is that's already factored and the reason we dropped from #20 to #23 since 2015. Our post-season resume, for better but mostly worse, has been consistent over the past 10 years, with only one super-regional appearance since 2009.

Maybe I'm too much of an optimist but....I think we are going to be pretty good this year. The pitching will be better (not sure if it could be worse) and I think we still have several quality bats in the lineup along with some additions from high school.

Again....maybe I'm too "glass half full" here but its just a feeling I get.

(09-20-2017 01:01 PM)Owl1998 Wrote:  Maybe I'm too much of an optimist but....I think we are going to be pretty good this year. The pitching will be better (not sure if it could be worse) and I think we still have several quality bats in the lineup along with some additions from high school.

Again....maybe I'm too "glass half full" here but its just a feeling I get.

I'm not there...yet. I do think the pitching will be vastly improved, especially if Salinas is back healthy. However, I'm far less optimistic at this point re. our offense. I'm hoping to get down for several days of Fall Ball-- both in October and then toward the end during Homecoming Week to evaluate first hand. I'm confident in the contributions we'll get from DiCaprio, Proctor (who I expect to rebound from a good, but worse than expected 2017), Dunlap (who we will hopefully have in the lineup for a full vs. half season in '18) and Cruz. We really need Chandler to return to his high OBP Freshman year form, Sarchet and/or Gneiting to have breakout seasons and for one or two of our newcomers (e.g., Aviles, Comeaux) to be productive.

However, with our 2018 and '19 commits, I'm pretty confidence we will not slide further.

I'm always optimistic at the beginning of the season.

Bartlett Giamatti (with liberties): The game begins in fall ball...

Yes preseason is the time for optimism! We as Owls baseball fans have ongoing reasons for optimism as cited in the ranking and the comments here. I feel much better about the program right now after the miraculous CUSA tourney championship, the recruiting uptick, the recent articles highlighting Rice's clever use of need based scholarships to help build a quality roster, and of course the new assistant coaches. In spite of worries over the OG's age, we appear to be in good shape -- NO room for complacency with as competitive as college baseball has become, but in good shape if we keep busting our tails and supporting the program.

How do we get credit for lots of institutional aid when the biggest complaint I've heard about recruiting is we can't match the institutional aid the current crop of elite schools provides? Can't have it both ways...

(09-21-2017 04:37 PM)cr11owl Wrote:  How do we get credit for lots of institutional aid when the biggest complaint I've heard about recruiting is we can't match the institutional aid the current crop of elite schools provides? Can't have it both ways...

We get lots. They get more. Lots more.

(09-21-2017 05:19 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(09-21-2017 04:37 PM)cr11owl Wrote:  How do we get credit for lots of institutional aid when the biggest complaint I've heard about recruiting is we can't match the institutional aid the current crop of elite schools provides? Can't have it both ways...

We get lots. They get more. Lots more.

What did McKinsey Report say about institutional aid?