(03-24-2019 10:00 AM)FNblazer Wrote: Alabama’s lack of an education lottery puts teams behind the 8-ball a bit, as baseball has to ration scholarships. Not sure how much of it is Shoop vs the program to be honest. When have we ever been any good in baseball? I can only remember making the tournament once several years ago by virtue of beating Mempiss in the conference tournament.
I've done a few posts that compare Mississippi and Georgia schools against Alabama schools, and I don't think the lottery has as much of an impact as we'd like to believe. I couldn't find those specific posts, but I did track down another one I made comparing UAB to the rest of the state & conference:
UAB RPI 5 Year Average: 137, 10 Year Average: 126. This is out of 297 D1 Baseball teams.
RPI from 2018 to 2014 and 5 year average for other programs in the state:
Alabama: 82, 175, 64, 45, 24 = 78
Auburn: 9, 38, 148, 26, 75 = 59
Troy: 41, 108, 93, 125, 193 = 112
South: 51, 32, 39, 78, 156 = 71
Samford: 90, 102, 127, 104, 74 = 99
JSU: 124, 111, 92, 179, 94 = 120
UAB 5 Year Rank: 6/6
5 year RPI average for other CUSA programs:
Charlotte: 136
FAU: 41
FIU: 122
La Tech: 147
Marchall: 182
MTSU: 117
NTU: N/A
ODU: 119
Rice 38
So Miss: 59
UTEP: N/A
UTSA: 114
WKU: 139
UAB 5 Year Rank: 9 /12
Baseball is a sport that's consolidating its talent in the south, regardless of whether you're P5 or G5. It's something I'd really like for UAB to improve at. I know several on here are Schoop fans and suggest that it's the facilities, so I hope they're able to improve that soon and make this a competitive program.