Dunlap crushes one to close the gap to 7-3.

The way that home run was called, there was an odd momentary pause in the middle of the ball that I thought had indicated he had misjudged the distance. Fortunately, it was just an odd pause.

How did we get so bad so fast?

Wasn't really that fast. We haven't been very good since 2013.

Yes but we are not even competitive now.

(03-19-2019 09:53 PM)OldOwl Wrote:  Yes but we are not even competitive now.

We had one of the greatest collegiate baseball coaches of all-time. You don't just fill that void, he was the whole reason we became a premiere program. Be it aging or other factors, we've been on a steady decline, and this year without him it's starting to look like a cliff. Have to hope Bragga can noticeably improve recruiting. I'm not counting on that.

(03-19-2019 10:03 PM)Buho00 Wrote:  

(03-19-2019 09:53 PM)OldOwl Wrote:  Yes but we are not even competitive now.

We had one of the greatest collegiate baseball coaches of all-time. You don't just fill that void, he was the whole reason we became a premiere program. Be it aging or other factors, we've been on a steady decline, and this year without him it's starting to look like a cliff. Have to hope Bragga can noticeably improve recruiting. I'm not counting on that.

Why not?

(03-19-2019 10:03 PM)Buho00 Wrote:  

(03-19-2019 09:53 PM)OldOwl Wrote:  Yes but we are not even competitive now.

We had one of the greatest collegiate baseball coaches of all-time. You don't just fill that void, he was the whole reason we became a premiere program. Be it aging or other factors, we've been on a steady decline, and this year without him it's starting to look like a cliff. Have to hope Bragga can noticeably improve recruiting. I'm not counting on that.

Um, last year was just as bad as this year and we replaced Ford Proctor and Ryan Chandler with.... Antonio Cruz and Beaulaurier...

Not gonna put this on Bragga yet.

Did we ever officially announce any baseball signings this year at riceowls.com? If not, why not?

It's kind of sad we have to go to Perfect Game or scroll through several pages of a thread here to get a guestimate on who we signed.

(03-19-2019 09:53 PM)OldOwl Wrote:  Yes but we are not even competitive now.

Bragga has a very different coaching style from Graham, predicated on the long ball. It worked at Tennessee Tech, so hopefully it will work here as well. Patience, Iago; let's give him a few recruiting classes to work with.

Also echoing Buho's sentiments, as what Graham accomplished at Rice was incredible and will take time to replicate, if it is ever replicated at all. Bragga and his staff have an excellent track record of player development at TTU, so I am cautiously optimistic he will work out here. The strikeouts & general approach at the plate with 2 strikes (as waltergreenberg noted before) does have me concerned, but perhaps that is something that will improve throughout the year.

(03-19-2019 10:15 PM)uconnbaseball Wrote:  Bragga has a very different coaching style from Graham, predicated on the long ball. It worked at Tennessee Tech, so hopefully it will work here as well. Patience, Iago; let's give him a few recruiting classes to work with.

I will say that the rake-and-pitch approach has me concerned. At TTU, Bragga had a team playing in a bandbox, so swinging away with abandon made more sense. At Rice and many other places, this approach might not yield as many wins.

The prevailing wisdom amongst the stat heads these days is that swinging away and not "giving away" outs is the way to yield the best outcomes over time. I am skeptical about that, primarily because it is harder to concentrate power on a college team in this dead(ish)-ball, dead-bat era. I think more analysis is needed to properly determine whether or not rake-and-pitch is the best way for all teams to approach the game, particularly those with recruiting limitations; I suspect that it is not.

And finally, rake-and-pitch might be a good way to get to Omaha, but I think it is a recipe for disaster once a team is there. Everyone knows that TD Ameritrade favors teams that can play some small ball because it is hard to hit home runs there. So do we want to just get back to Omaha, or do we want to win it all again?

I get the feeling that Bragga is pretty astute, and as such he will surely be able to make adjustments to his philosophy as needed. But if there is one thing that concerns me in the short-term, it is that he might stick to rake-and-pitch longer than he should. We'll see. Bragga might turn us into the '27 Yankees of college baseball for all I know.

One other thing:

To those who would point out that we played more small ball under Coach Graham and still couldn't win, I would argue that the philosophy wasn't the problem; rather, it was the coaching of the execution itself in Graham's final years that held us back (whatever that would be down to; I sure don't know). UC-Irvine is evidence that you can take a more tactical and controlled approach to batting and still have a good team every season with mostly second-tier recruits.

(03-20-2019 12:06 AM)Wiessman Wrote:  One other thing:

To those who would point out that we played more small ball under Coach Graham and still couldn't win, I would argue that the philosophy wasn't the problem; rather, it was the coaching of the execution itself in Graham's final years that held us back (whatever that would be down to; I sure don't know). UC-Irvine is evidence that you can take a more tactical and controlled approach to batting and still have a good team every season with mostly second-tier recruits.

Hey guys. USM fan here. I was curious how the transition this year was going for Rice and what the morale was like. Just thought I would jump in.

Irvine has been lousy (as in, RPI in the 80-110 range) for the last 7 years, aside from that CWS run in 2014 (and correct me if I'm wrong but I believe they made than run as a 3-seed that barely made the tourney). And I really don't think West Coast comparisons are appropriate for any other region. West Coast college baseball is its own entity.

Small ball rarely works for teams outside of the West Coast. Even there, it only works if you have an elite pitching staff with a caliber of talent that you guys haven't had since the late 00's.

Someone above mentioned the dropoff being "sudden." To me, it hasn't sudden, at all. Pitching was what carried your program. Based on my limited viewing of Rice, the decline in pitching talent has been gradual but noticeable since around 2011. That's not to say that you didn't have the Kubitza-type ace every other year but there weren't as many of those guys--especially, in the starting rotation. I suspect that the BBCOR shift hid a lot of flaws from 2012-15 but once they introduced the new ball in 2016, the dropoff was obvious.

Rice is not an easy job. Wayne Graham made it look easy for a while....but college baseball is a different game now. There is WAY more competition for recruits than when Wayne Graham was at his zenith. And even a legendary coach like Graham couldn't continue to bring in the talent to keep you at even a Top-25 level. Obviously, Graham reached a level that Rick Jones did not, but I think you and Tulane have followed similar trajectories--private school programs built up by a head coach in the 90's and 00's that could not continue to bring in the talent once other schools in the area began to invest in baseball

I really hope the new coach can turn it around. This conference is a dumpster fire without Rice being good. It is depressing to look at our very flawed team and just assume a conference championship and maybe 24-25 wins.

(03-20-2019 03:53 PM)eaglenjxn Wrote:  

(03-20-2019 12:06 AM)Wiessman Wrote:  One other thing:

To those who would point out that we played more small ball under Coach Graham and still couldn't win, I would argue that the philosophy wasn't the problem; rather, it was the coaching of the execution itself in Graham's final years that held us back (whatever that would be down to; I sure don't know). UC-Irvine is evidence that you can take a more tactical and controlled approach to batting and still have a good team every season with mostly second-tier recruits.

Hey guys. USM fan here. I was curious how the transition this year was going for Rice and what the morale was like. Just thought I would jump in.

Irvine has been lousy (as in, RPI in the 80-110 range) for the last 7 years, aside from that CWS run in 2014 (and correct me if I'm wrong but I believe they made than run as a 3-seed that barely made the tourney). And I really don't think West Coast comparisons are appropriate for any other region. West Coast college baseball is its own entity.

Small ball rarely works for teams outside of the West Coast. Even there, it only works if you have an elite pitching staff with a caliber of talent that you guys haven't had since the late 00's.

Someone above mentioned the dropoff being "sudden." To me, it hasn't sudden, at all. Pitching was what carried your program. Based on my limited viewing of Rice, the decline in pitching talent has been gradual but noticeable since around 2011. That's not to say that you didn't have the Kubitza-type ace every other year but there weren't as many of those guys--especially, in the starting rotation. I suspect that the BBCOR shift hid a lot of flaws from 2012-15 but once they introduced the new ball in 2016, the dropoff was obvious.

Rice is not an easy job. Wayne Graham made it look easy for a while....but college baseball is a different game now and even he couldn't continue to bring in the talent to keep you at a high level.

I really hope the new coach can turn it around. This conference is a dumpster fire without Rice being good. It is depressing to look at our very flawed team and just assume a conference championship and maybe 24-25 wins.

Well said! I agree with all of your points. Our trip to Hattiesburg was always my favorite. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

(03-20-2019 03:53 PM)eaglenjxn Wrote:  Irvine has been lousy (as in, RPI in the 80-110 range) for the last 7 years, aside from that CWS run in 2014 (and correct me if I'm wrong but I believe they made than run as a 3-seed that barely made the tourney). And I really don't think West Coast comparisons are appropriate for any other region. West Coast college baseball is its own entity.

While I agree with some of what you typed, I do not agree with the characterization of Irvine as "lousy." The RPI almost always underrates West Coast teams, and I'm sorry, but if you think Irvine is lousy, then you clearly don't watch West Coast conference baseball, Big West or otherwise. (I am, in fact, the one on these boards that noted weeks ago when we were playing Irvine that the Big West has been down recently, so I'm not blithely ignoring details. I am also the one that said that Irvine might shred Rice because, y'know, I actually watch Irvine. A Southern Miss fan calling Irvine lousy for any period of time in recent memory... That's rich. USM has advanced out of an opening regional exactly once.)

Also, I am not saying that Rice has to be an out-and-out small ball team. I am saying that Rice should at least have it as part of its approach, rather than going all in with rake-and-pitch, which is a bit of an uncompromising strategy. There is a difference. I certainly don't expect Rice to mimic Irvine's style wholesale.

And baseball is still baseball anyway, at least in the continental US. West Coast baseball being somehow uniformly "different" from other baseball is something of a false dichotomy perpetuated by talking heads and dudes in sports bars. Good baseball is exactly that, and as such it works everywhere and against anyone. If that were not true, the Oregon State Beavers wouldn't be the national champions.

While the result sucked, Gayle, Wood, Deskins, and Content all had encouraging performances. In fact, Gayle was downright nasty - that flat fastball and bad breaker sure fooled those Aggies... too bad he's not good enough for the haters.

Anyways, we really need to turn it on to have a shot at .500 ball. Would hate to see UTSA come into our house and rough us up.

This weekend seems to be do or die.

The good news is that through the F_U and aTm series, we drastically cut our error per game average. As of last week we were averaging 2.2 errors per game and now, we are at 1.9, which is a welcome development.

Waiting for the latest stats, but as of March 15, we had 41 errors, which was tied for #1 in the country (with Florida aTm)

(03-21-2019 11:09 AM)RiceOwl Wrote:  While the result sucked, Gayle, Wood, Deskins, and Content all had encouraging performances. In fact, Gayle was downright nasty - that flat fastball and bad breaker sure fooled those Aggies... too bad he's not good enough for the haters.

Anyways, we really need to turn it on to have a shot at .500 ball. Would hate to see UTSA come into our house and rough us up.

This weekend seems to be do or die.

If someone ever told me that Gayle had bad stuff I would think that they knew nothing about the game of baseball.

(03-21-2019 11:34 AM)Antarius Wrote:  Waiting for the latest stats, but as of March 15, we had 41 errors, which was tied for #1 in the country (with Florida aTm)

Florida aTm? Is that a joint venture?

(03-19-2019 09:40 PM)RiceFootball2K5 Wrote:  Wasn't really that fast. We haven't been very good since 2013.

We won a conference tourney in 2017, finished second in the always brutal LSU regional in 2017 and 2016 and had NCAA bids every year until last year. Don't rewrite history to suit your needs. It has become impossible to compete in Men's sports at Rice with the evolution of the P5, but please don't make excuses about how fast the flagship program of Rice has fallen. I will argue this is by design as the AD purposefully and willfully tried to de-emphasize Baseball in an attempt to build up basketball and football. You see the results on the field.

(03-21-2019 02:03 PM)interwebowl Wrote:  

(03-19-2019 09:40 PM)RiceFootball2K5 Wrote:  Wasn't really that fast. We haven't been very good since 2013.

We won a conference tourney in 2017, finished second in the always brutal LSU regional in 2017 and 2016 and had NCAA bids every year until last year. Don't rewrite history to suit your needs. It has become impossible to compete in Men's sports at Rice with the evolution of the P5, but please don't make excuses about how fast the flagship program of Rice has fallen. I will argue this is by design as the AD purposefully and willfully tried to de-emphasize Baseball in an attempt to build up basketball and football. You see the results on the field.

Ah yes, since the AD was responsible for clutch hitting and especially the ability to field groundballs. Good to know.

This is some infowars level tinfoil.