Since all you can post is negative comments about Southern Miss athletics, I missed your post where Eustachy kicked off the second best player from last year for not attending class.  Maybe you posted that and I didn't see it?

 

Also, the baseball team RPI is currently #24, plenty good enough for a regional bid.  Sorry to disappoint you.

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Originally posted by: Info
"Since all you can post is negative comments about Southern Miss athletics, I missed your post where Eustachy kicked off the second best player from last year for not attending class.  Maybe you posted that and I didn't see it?   Also, the baseball team RPI is currently #24, plenty good enough for a regional bid.  Sorry to disappoint you."

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The Cox-Purvis Report has been covering positives and negatives for quite some time.  However, the news is what it is, and USM's athletic news has been anything but positive lately: Raines, Ford, Carruth rumor, sub-par season by Baseball standards, floundering Softball program, etc.

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Originally posted by: Info
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The follow-up report looked like a thorough response to me.  I guess you can call it bs if you want./

The #24 (using info's numbers) USM baseball team just lost to #96 Louisville.

"I know many of you on this board enjoy anything negative that happens at Southern Miss, so I hope you got your jollies over the loss today."


That's ridiculous, untrue and insulting. But you knew that.

I'm ok with that, given our budget and fan support.  Baseball is an exception, at this point we are better than mid level and C-USA is better than mid level, especially next year with Rice joining the conference.  Come out to a baseball game, you may enjoy it.

 

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Originally posted by: Fliebouy
"What unthinking athletic fans cannot get through their heads it that USM is a mid level team in a mid level conference (maybe even worse that that in football).  That is what we are and what we will be as long as we are in Conf USA - mid of the mid level.  If you want big time athletics go somewhere else (and nowhere in this state).  Otherwise enjoy Bower et al being medium sized fish in medium sized ponds."

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Conference USA ranks just behind the Missouri Valley Conference and just ahead of the Mid American Conference in baseball right now.  That looks to be a mid level position.  USM, is however above mid level within the conference. 

Oklahoma just fired their baseball coach.  Looks like just the kind of "worl' class" coach SFT and Co. would like to have at Southern Miss.

I am a fan of college sports and have followed the "big three" sports and several other sports for some time. USM needs to give up the idea that it can be a top national football or basketball program and focus on its competitive strength --- baseball. There are several reasons for this. First, it takes a lot of money to be a top program in football, and your coach has to be willing to do some things that will ultimately fall in the "gray" area, like recruiting players with questionable character, offering incentives, etc. Second, because of the high number of scholarships relative to the total number of players on a team, there is tremendous parity in both college football and basketball in the mid-level schools; there are a few teams that are almost always "good," and those teams compete for championships while the middle of the pack slugs it out. USM is in the middle of the pack in both football and basketball, as evidenced by its 25-year trend in wins and losses in each sport.

However, baseball is a different subject. Baseball has a relatively small number of scholarships in comparison to its roster size, meaning that teams have to rely on walk-ons to fill out line-ups. Hattiesburg and surrounding areas have been baseball crazy for quite some time, and while Hattiesburg doesn't turn out a lot of professional-quality talent, it does produce a sufficient number of collegiate-quality talent, especially by C-USA standards. This is what has made Corky Palmer a successful coach. But, USM is about to lose any baseball advantage it may have, given the C-USA realignment. Rice is a clearly superior program and is located in a more talent-rich area. In my opinion, if USM doesn't win the C-USA championship this year, it probably will not win it for quite some time; the trophy will become Rice's to lose every year. Why? Superior funding, recruiting, and sadly (because Palmer is probably USM's best coach) superior coaching.

What it boils down to is this: USM is a mid-level school with a mid-level athletic program. Sometimes, a given sports team will overachieve, but in general, USM's athletics will probably be mid-level no matter who the coaches are or what USM does to try to pull itself up. The reason? Because everyone else is trying to get better at the same time, and there are only a fixed number of slots in the upper echelon of sports rankings.

Follies


Have you not looked at the baseball rankings? Tulane is consistantly one of the best in the nation. As is Houston, C-USA is a great baseball league....and has been for years. It gets even better next year with the addition of Rice and UCF. C-USA is also dropping some dead-weight baseball programs like St Louis, Cincinnati and Louisville.


Rice is traditionally a very strong team, but as of this past week USM had a higher RPI than Rice. This is a down year for Rice, as it is for Southern Miss. Unlike football, there is no glass ceiling in baseball. I suspect Southern Miss will compete for the C-USA title most years in baseball in the N-CUSA. Also, N-CUSA will send 5-6 teams to NCAA Regionals each year. Get to a regional and you never know what can happen. The past three years C-USA has sent 4-5 teams to regionals.

Southern Miss will be just fine in baseball, this is one thing I will not allow this board to degrade is Southern Miss baseball and Coach Palmer.

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Originally posted by: Kudzu King
"Follies Have you not looked at the baseball rankings? Tulane is consistantly one of the best in the nation. As is Houston, C-USA is a great baseball league....and has been for years. It gets even better next year with the addition of Rice and UCF. C-USA is also dropping some dead-weight baseball programs like St Louis, Cincinnati and Louisville. Rice is traditionally a very strong team, but as of this past week USM had a higher RPI than Rice. This is a down year for Rice, as it is for Southern Miss. Unlike football, there is no glass ceiling in baseball. I suspect Southern Miss will compete for the C-USA title most years in baseball in the N-CUSA. Also, N-CUSA will send 5-6 teams to NCAA Regionals each year. Get to a regional and you never know what can happen. The past three years C-USA has sent 4-5 teams to regionals. Southern Miss will be just fine in baseball, this is one thing I will not allow this board to degrade is Southern Miss baseball and Coach Palmer. "

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Kudzu:

In fairness, when some of the former C-USA dregs (in baseball) get access to the BCS $ ($15,000,000/yr.) from their football membership in the Big East, their baseball programs might not be cellar dwellars in any conference any more.

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Originally posted by: Kudzu King
"Sports Gal If you will follow baseball a little more closely you will realize that baseball success has more to do with geography than money. Every baseball program is limited to 11.7 scholarships. Couple that with the fact that in many northern states, baseball can't even be played until this time of year because of weather. There are very, very few northern schools that have ever had any success in baseball Notre Dame and Ohio State are the only northern schools that have had much baseball success over the past decade. While in the South, schools such as UL-Lafayette, Tulane, South Alabama, FAU, Stetson, UNO, Lamar, and Rice have had a great deal of success on the baseball diamond. Baseball is a great game. I would suggest everyone on this board become familier with it."

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I never disputed the impact geography has on baseball.  I just implied that Louisville et al's facilities could improve drastically with some $, and perhaps a better player or 2 will end up there.

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Originally posted by: Kudzu King
"Sports Gal

If you will follow baseball a little more closely you will realize that baseball success has more to do with geography than money. Every baseball program is limited to 11.7 scholarships. Couple that with the fact that in many northern states, baseball can't even be played until this time of year because of weather. There are very, very few northern schools that have ever had any success in baseball Notre Dame and Ohio State are the only northern schools that have had much baseball success over the past decade. While in the South, schools such as UL-Lafayette, Tulane, South Alabama, FAU, Stetson, UNO, Lamar, and Rice have had a great deal of success on the baseball diamond.

Baseball is a great game. I would suggest everyone on this board become familier with it."

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So, because SG doesn't subscribe to your beliefs, she needs to learn more about baseball? Perhaps she knows a lot about baseball but doesn't follow your C-USA and USM-centric thought process. Independent observation (see above) that no C-USA team can be considered "dominant" at present.

Also, SG's point about money is a good one. Given that geography cannot be changed, one way to rise in the pecking order is to spend money on facilities. Reference Arkansas, who had sub-par baseball before it spent money on what some experts believe is the best college field in the nation (by the way, Auburn, LSU, Arkansas, and Alabama are among the top 10 in that category). I wonder if that has any correlation with CWS appearances....