In other threads, some have said that recruiting has dropped off in recent years. Others have commented that enough pitchers do not get enough innings. I am not going to discuss those topics, but only note the difficulties in recruiting for baseball, both in general and at Rice.

First, there are only 11.7 scholarships to divide among up to 35 players. This affects a lot of things, including the depth of your roster.

First would be the cost families are expected to pay with a partial scholarship. When you consider the cost of attendance, it definitely gives an advantage to state schools with much lower tuition. Also, the percentage of scholarship offered can result in a substantial cost difference between Rice and other schools. Also, I am aware that Louisiana has academic scholarships for tuition and fees to their public universities dependent on GPA and test scores. When Rice played LSU in the super-regional a few years back, someone told me that LSU was recruiting his son as a pitcher as long as his grades and test scores were good enough so he would not need an athletic scholarship. I would not be surprised if other states had similar opportunities.

Second, you can recruit and sign a kid, but lose him to the draft. Football and basketball do not have to worry about that. You can talk to a kid and his family and hope they are being upfront about what they will do if drafted, but you never know. Also, if you sign the elite high school players, you will have to take your chances with the draft and hope they make it to campus. So now you have the dilemma of offering guys that can really make a difference immediately, but knowing there is a good chance that they do not make it to campus and you had scholarship money committed that could have been offered to another player. In other words, do you offer the 5 star guy with a 25% chance of showing up on campus or the 4 star guy at 75%.

Third, how accurately can you project high school baseball players at the D1 level? Kids grow and mature at different rates. Can they play at the same high level they do in high school where they are the man, opposed to college with increased competition and with the time management issues related to academic requirements, girl friends, family, and alums? Think of the number of high draft picks who never make it up to the bigs, so even the MLB has trouble projecting talent.

Fourth, you have the draft. It occurs in the summer between academic years. Also, juniors are eligible to be drafted and can choose whether to sign or return to school. In football and I believe basketball, underclassmen decide whether to enter the draft. IIRC, if you enter the draft and do not get selected, you have forfeited your remaining eligibility. Schools have to guess which of their current players will get drafted, when they will get drafted, and what the likelihood is that they will sign if drafted when signing an incoming class. Some kids will leave if they are high picks, some will leave if drafted, and some want to stay in school for 4 years. Also, someone might have had a surprisingly good year and unexpectedly get drafted and sign. Also, a pitcher who had good stuff but could not find the strike zone might get drafted and sign, when he possibly could have contributed substantially the next year after working out some mechanical issues. If you lose someone unexpectedly and combine that with a kid out of high school that signs, it could present some challenges. Basketball and football do not have these issues.

Another issue is the renewal of scholarships. My understanding (could be wrong) is that at Rice athletic scholarships are pretty much automatically renewed each year. Therefore, if a recruit does not meet expectations for whatever reason, he stays on scholarship. With only 11.7 scholarships, it hurts when a player does not work out. I believe that other schools do not do this. IIRC, there was an infielder at UH in the Noble era who started for 3 years and was told that his scholarship would not be renewed for his senior year, so he transferred to TCU. I am not advocating forcing kids out. I would note that missing on one baseball player would be the equivalent of missing on 7 football players based on scholarship totals.

This year, only one school from God's gift to college baseball (SEC) and one from the ACC are in the CWS. This happened even with all of the hosting opportunities for those schools. It is difficult to make it to Omaha and you probably need some luck. If your ace pitcher has one bad start all year, but it occurs in a regional or super, that may be enough to keep you out of Omaha. Or, perhaps an opposing pitcher has the game of his life against you and knocks you out. After all, these guys got recruited to D1 schools for a reason. Or a freshman hits a walk-off grannie off your All-American closer. That's why you play the games. Personally, I did not think LSU had a lot of pitching depth, and think of all of the advantages that program has.

Others may disagree with me, which is fine. All I can say is that to me, it is impressive when schools have continued success year after year with all of the special circumstances coaches have to deal with in college baseball.

Also, I heard Chris del Conte say (on the radio) that you have to throw a ton of money into facilities to attract the best. And it does seem that is what successful baseball schools are doing. Reckling upgrades should help in this regard.

Even Augie was down on "entitlement" among our "student-athletes." But that seems to be the new normal.

(06-16-2016 07:50 AM)grol Wrote:  Also, I heard Chris del Conte say (on the radio) that you have to throw a ton of money into facilities to attract the best. And it does seem that is what successful baseball schools are doing. Reckling upgrades should help in this regard.
Even Augie was down on "entitlement" among our "student-athletes." But that seems to be the new normal.

CDC is a bricks-and-mortar guy. He's going to say that because that's what he knows.

I'm not saying he's wrong. In fact, there's a lot of truth to it. But it takes more than that.

(06-16-2016 08:22 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(06-16-2016 07:50 AM)grol Wrote:  Also, I heard Chris del Conte say (on the radio) that you have to throw a ton of money into facilities to attract the best. And it does seem that is what successful baseball schools are doing. Reckling upgrades should help in this regard.
Even Augie was down on "entitlement" among our "student-athletes." But that seems to be the new normal.

CDC is a bricks-and-mortar guy. He's going to say that because that's what he knows.

I'm not saying he's wrong. In fact, there's a lot of truth to it. But it takes more than that.

Of course it will, but unless a student has a good connection with a coach or university, I'd imagine the four things that would entice them to join would be team quality, playing time, financials, and facilities. Competing against TCU for recruits, we are mostly even on the quality and playing time issue, so we need to bump up the quality of financial support and facilities.

We aren't losing recruits to worse programs, we are losing them to equal or better programs it appears.

(06-16-2016 11:53 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(06-16-2016 08:22 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(06-16-2016 07:50 AM)grol Wrote:  Also, I heard Chris del Conte say (on the radio) that you have to throw a ton of money into facilities to attract the best. And it does seem that is what successful baseball schools are doing. Reckling upgrades should help in this regard.
Even Augie was down on "entitlement" among our "student-athletes." But that seems to be the new normal.

CDC is a bricks-and-mortar guy. He's going to say that because that's what he knows.
I'm not saying he's wrong. In fact, there's a lot of truth to it. But it takes more than that.

Of course it will, but unless a student has a good connection with a coach or university, I'd imagine the four things that would entice them to join would be team quality, playing time, financials, and facilities. Competing against TCU for recruits, we are mostly even on the quality and playing time issue, so we need to bump up the quality of financial support and facilities.
We aren't losing recruits to worse programs, we are losing them to equal or better programs it appears.

At this point, I think the financial support issue is much bigger than the facilities issue, at least with respect to baseball and certainly with respect to baseball and TCU.

My take is that it is a numbers game. The popularity of college baseball has increased, the level of play and facilities are greater than some bus league class a ball for kids. Coach Graham was way ahead of the game and it produced for Rice, and I feel his program is one that has been copied. Baseball has become a middle class to upper middle class sport, with the exception of a few and of course those from the Caribbean. An executive wants his son in the show just as bad as a single mom wants her son to make big bucks in the pros. The executive is willing to pay for lessons, travel all year in select leagues etc to hone the kids skills if he shows promise. (Ex pros and coaches make 70-100k a year in burbs giving lessons). The good ones hunt for a great place to land in their next step and other schools are wanting that piece of pie, and I feel Rice still gets great kids, the pool is bigger and other schools get theirs too. The choices could come come to aid, perhaps a Baylor or Tcu kid could get a couple thousand just off of their church affiliation scholarship, while Rice cannot. But lots of the kids parents can afford to make up difference, and there are so many choices now, it boils down maybe to geography, school climate and quickest route to the pros.

Other than the financial support/limited scholarships, these difficulties are faced by every college coach, so if we are losing ground, we are doing so for schools with the same issues. My take is that there are 2 issues with the in-coming talent: the rise of high quality academic schools (Vandy and UVA come to mind), which would be looking at the same pool as Rice does, so we have more competition than we used to have (note the UVA pitcher that won their CWS championship game last year was Brandon Waddell, a left-hander from Houston, Texas-he had a great career at UVA, and I wonder if he got a sniff from Rice or if he picked UVA over Rice); and the loss of kids to the draft that used to always come here.

I could have this wrong because this is anecdotal, but I remember when the mantra was that kids with a Rice offer were always a tough sign in the MLB draft, and now we lose kids drafted out of HS in late rounds (Stone Garrett; Wakamatsu). There may be a reason for each one and thus this gets dismissed, but it is these high-end talents that come here for the great education and life prospects that drive the program. Again, many/most of UVA's stars over the last several years (Conner Jones; Derek Fisher; Nathan Kirby; Danny Hultzen (all top 50 picks in the MLB draft out of college) were very high picks out of HS who decided to go to college instead. Lose 1 of those a year and you are dropping 3 talented kids off of every roster, every year.

OwlsFan and ETxOwl, you are wrong-- Rice faces far different financial issues with regards to baseball scholarships than other school; particularly Vandy, TCU and Baylor, all of whom can supplement their 11.7 scholarships with need-based scholarships and, in the case of Vandy, several incremental, state-allowed scholarships (e.g., for african-american student-athletes). We have recently lost commits to all three for that specific reason.

(06-18-2016 07:08 AM)ETx Owl Wrote:  My take is that it is a numbers game. The popularity of college baseball has increased, the level of play and facilities are greater than some bus league class a ball for kids. Coach Graham was way ahead of the game and it produced for Rice, and I feel his program is one that has been copied. Baseball has become a middle class to upper middle class sport, with the exception of a few and of course those from the Caribbean. An executive wants his son in the show just as bad as a single mom wants her son to make big bucks in the pros. The executive is willing to pay for lessons, travel all year in select leagues etc to hone the kids skills if he shows promise. (Ex pros and coaches make 70-100k a year in burbs giving lessons). The good ones hunt for a great place to land in their next step and other schools are wanting that piece of pie, and I feel Rice still gets great kids, the pool is bigger and other schools get theirs too. The choices could come come to aid, perhaps a Baylor or Tcu kid could get a couple thousand just off of their church affiliation scholarship, while Rice cannot. But lots of the kids parents can afford to make up difference, and there are so many choices now, it boils down maybe to geography, school climate and quickest route to the pros.

Yes, there are many who can afford the difference. But being able to afford the difference and wanting to afford the difference are two different things. And in this environment they don't have to. They have options. And when the goal is a major league contract, the difference between a Rice education and a TCU education gets lost in the noise.

(06-15-2016 07:17 PM)Owl Is In Chains Wrote:  Third, how accurately can you project high school baseball players at the D1 level? Kids grow and mature at different rates. Can they play at the same high level they do in high school where they are the man, opposed to college with increased competition and with the time management issues related to academic requirements, girl friends, family, and alums? Think of the number of high draft picks who never make it up to the bigs, so even the MLB has trouble projecting talent.

I was never involved in any scholarship athletics, but did spend probably too much time in Autry court. All I can say is I have no idea how those scholarship athletes managed to perform both on the field and in the classroom. I was working about 24 hours a week so that didn't help my GPA, but was barely hanging in there academically even without a girl friend. In fact as a senior I declined a stunning invitation, twice, from a rather attractive Rice co-ed, because I was afraid she might be the end of me having any hopes of graduating, ever. I suppose I was pretty much the prototypical Rice student except for my time spent shooting hoops and playing pick up games at Autry. I have had more than my fair share of moments questioning my priorities back then....Let's see, shooting hoops with a bunch of sweaty guys on the one hand, or spending time with a wonderful young woman on the other. Yeah, I'll go for the hoops. ?!?! I did love the game of basketball but thought I had mastery over it in my mind, if not on the court. That young woman, well I wasn't so sure I would even know who I was with her. In my professional life, I've had plenty of experience recruiting and evaluating engineering talent from various walks of life. A number of schools used to include a graphic of GPA versus semester with the candidate's package, and on more than one I noticed an abrupt rise in their GPA at one point on the graph. Upon asking the candidate what happened at that point to allow them to improve their academic performance, many told me that is when they met their girl friend, now wife.

(06-18-2016 07:14 AM)owlsfan Wrote:  Other than the financial support/limited scholarships, these difficulties are faced by every college coach, so if we are losing ground, we are doing so for schools with the same issues. My take is that there are 2 issues with the in-coming talent: the rise of high quality academic schools (Vandy and UVA come to mind), which would be looking at the same pool as Rice does, so we have more competition than we used to have ...

The rosters of Vandy, UVa and other academic schools don't show very many Texans (except for Tulane) ... but do show that they all seem to attract players from many more states & countries than do our Owls:

Vandy -- 2 Texans; roster has folks from 19 states
UVa -- 2 Texans; roster has folks from 11 states/countries
Stanford -- 3 Texans; roster has folks from 10 states
Tulane -- 9 Texans; roster has folks from 12 states
Princeton (current Ivy League champ) -- 3 Texans; roster has folks from 14 states/countries

Rice: 27 Texans; roster has folks from 5 states.

(06-18-2016 07:14 AM)owlsfan Wrote:  ... (note the UVA pitcher that won their CWS championship game last year was Brandon Waddell, a left-hander from Houston, Texas-he had a great career at UVA, and I wonder if he got a sniff from Rice or if he picked UVA over Rice)

Check out this post made after the same question was asked last June: http://csnbbs.com/thread-740731-post-121...id12143194:

Quote:... playing college baseball in his home state was never high on Waddell’s priority list.

“I decided I wanted to get out of Texas in the beginning,” (Brandon) Waddell said ... . “So I didn’t talk much to Texas schools. … I lived there my whole life, so I wanted to experience something new.”

... and also this, http://blog.triblive.com/bucco-blog/2016...plus-more/:

Quote:Rice, the local baseball powerhouse, was heavily recruiting Waddell, and so were several others. In the end, it came down to Stanford and Virginia, the latter making the extra effort to see how Waddell had progressed prior to his senior year.