The unofficial online home for fans of the UAB Blazers. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

This ain’t football man… any baseball team can beat another if they have the superior pitching on that day. Midweek games especially when the supposed stronger team may be saving its best pitchers for conference weekend games.

I don't care how you spin it...a D1 losing to a D3 is bad. Really bad. No excuse. And to lose by 10 runs? Honeymoon is over Coach Dunn...

I think we throw our pride aside and let the man have another year to recruit. This was a lost season before it began. We will get a better picture next season.

(05-03-2023 04:52 AM)blazerman2006 Wrote:  I don't care how you spin it...a D1 losing to a D3 is bad. Really bad. No excuse. And to lose by 10 runs? Honeymoon is over Coach Dunn...

We used to play them every season in the early days of the program, when they were NAIA, and one of the best teams in the country at that level. But there was not that much difference then in college baseball between NAIA, NCAA D-II or D-I. In 1979--the first year of our program--we beat Alabama and Auburn, but B'ham-Southern no-hit us and beat us.

And here we are, winning these midweek games against Alabama and Auburn and Jax State, but getting run-ruled by a D3 team. That's not the way it is supposed to work in 2023. Pretty embarrasing.

We should be more concerned about the 5-16 conference record. A perceived bad loss to a non D-1 team midweek is whatever. Not even qualifying for the conference tournament is terrible. It's funny how nobody on this board seemingly cares about the baseball program until we lose by 10 to a school in the same city.

(05-03-2023 10:41 AM)blazers9911 Wrote:  We should be more concerned about the 5-16 conference record. A perceived bad loss to a non D-1 team midweek is whatever. Not even qualifying for the conference tournament is terrible. It's funny how nobody on this board seemingly cares about the baseball program until we lose by 10 to a school in the same city.

I agree....the conference record is bad. We won the first game of the UTSA series on Friday--they were ranked #25 nationally coming in--and were leading 5-2 going to the ninth on Saturday. And just came unglued and lost. You could feel it happening, and knew they were going to lose. Then they lost on Sunday, to lose the series. This team just doesn't know how to win. And their bats are anemic. I don't think Casey knew how big of a challenge this was going to be, but he has already started playing some of the younger guys for the future.

I don't think it's that that nobody cares. I think must understand that it was going to be a rebuilding year. Losing to a DIII team is unacceptable but what do you think should be done that is not already being done?

The non-money sports are funny crossing divisions. It's not as simple as this school is smaller and we should stomp them every time. Baseball is also the wildest of sports when it comes to upsets. It takes one bad inning for a team to be down 7-0 before they even bat.

I say people don't care because there hasn't been a post in this thread in almost 2 months and we are getting worked up over one meaningless game. I'm not complaining at all about what is being done currently. We have a proven coach in year 2. Maybe he'll succeed, maybe he won't. I just don't know why this is the time we decide to bring something negative up.

Because some people like being negative by nature. Not calling anyone out, just making a general observation regarding sports.

(05-03-2023 11:41 AM)blazers9911 Wrote:  The non-money sports are funny crossing divisions. It's not as simple as this school is smaller and we should stomp them every time. Baseball is also the wildest of sports when it comes to upsets. It takes one bad inning for a team to be down 7-0 before they even bat.

I say people don't care because there hasn't been a post in this thread in almost 2 months and we are getting worked up over one meaningless game. I'm not complaining at all about what is being done currently. We have a proven coach in year 2. Maybe he'll succeed, maybe he won't. I just don't know why this is the time we decide to bring something negative up.

We didn't just lose to a DIII team, we got run ruled. That's another level of bad.

It happens in baseball. All the time. The best DIII teams are every bit capable of beating even top D1s and definitely good enough to run rule a struggling team in a midweek game.

Just like UAB is bad enough to miss the C-USA tournament and good enough to knock off SEC teams in the middle of the week and leave their fans whining just like they got run ruled by a D3.

This ain’t football.

So why are we so bad this year?

We have a team batting average of .227 and have hit only 17 home runs in 44 games. There are other stats you can look at but you really don’t need a 2nd paragraph to get to the root of the problem. This team cannot hit for average or power. It ranks 293 of 295 D1 teams in batting average and 284th in home runs. It ranks 290th in runs scored.

They also have 11 losses of either one run or extra innings. They led late in many of those but couldn’t manufacture enough offense to close out. The pitching has actually been decent, not great but decent, considering how much of a struggle it is to score. Our pitching ERA is 119th, between Texas A&M and UCF.

I find it fitting, and a little satisfying, that a school many of you were championing their possible closing, absolutely cleaned your clock on the field.

The scholarship situation in DI baseball is screwed up, that is why these things can happen. Give your coach some time, he’ll get you where you want to be, but minimum of 3 years to get there.

Yep on both points.

With D1 baseball having such scholarship limits and so many on partials, it shouldn’t be surprising at all that top D3s can field teams that can beat d1 schools regularly. There are thousands of players in the talent pool that are high quality college material, with an eye on a good degree as much as the minors, who would opt to go to a high academic D3 to play over a partial at a public D1. If they have the means or qualify for other financial aid, it is a legit option for that player. BSC has always put a good baseball team on the field at whatever level they have played.

I will admit I didn’t expect our team to struggle so much this season, and I will also say I expected us to beat BSC (and also not get swept in as many conference series either). It has been disappointing. But also shows how much work is still to be done recruiting. It will take Coach Dunn some time to turn this around. He wouldn’t be the first good coach we’ve had who struggled out of the gate to fix the structural challenges our program has

(05-03-2023 11:55 AM)Blazer4Life14 Wrote:  

(05-03-2023 11:41 AM)blazers9911 Wrote:  The non-money sports are funny crossing divisions. It's not as simple as this school is smaller and we should stomp them every time. Baseball is also the wildest of sports when it comes to upsets. It takes one bad inning for a team to be down 7-0 before they even bat.

I say people don't care because there hasn't been a post in this thread in almost 2 months and we are getting worked up over one meaningless game. I'm not complaining at all about what is being done currently. We have a proven coach in year 2. Maybe he'll succeed, maybe he won't. I just don't know why this is the time we decide to bring something negative up.

We didn't just lose to a DIII team, we got run ruled. That's another level of bad.

It’s really not what you are trying to make it out to be, but ok.

The Alabama job is open now.

(05-04-2023 01:29 PM)uabblazer2012 Wrote:  The Alabama job is open now.

Hopefully another AD for them as well

UAB needs to sweep MTSU this weekend. It also would be nice to see Rice get swept by WKy.