Not another one

[smazza]

mikeg-ok

[Guest S.  Bien]

"Anyways, you can't compare a Div. II school's winning to a Div 1 school. Totally different scenario!" ???

Respectfully, I don't see how you CANNOT compare the two. Why does Florida Southern continue year after year

to produce top 10 teams-same for UNF,Tampa,Rollins?

They don't always get the top players-actually rarely do.

They do it with good coaching. D1 schools will not play them. They can't afford a loss to a DII school and believe it-it has happened.

Because it's all relative.  True, they do it with good coaching, but the players are not on-par with the I-A level, and in particular the competition USF faces.   USF faced seven teams that were ranked at one point this year, that's nationally ranked, in football, and five in softball.  They faced over a half-dozen first and second round potential draft pick pitchers.   The margin of error for USF in baseball, and softball is called slim and none.  We played UCF, Miami(Super Regional), USM, Tulane(World Series), ECU, UF(World Series), Army, Stetson, Wichita State, Louisiana-Lafayette, Quinnipiac, and TCU.  That makes 32 of our 64 games (50%) were against post season opponents- two which are in the College World Series and each has about a half-dozen major leaguers on their squads, and 18 against teams that were or are ranked.  

With that type of competition the margin of error is ZERO!  AND ANY EDGE you can grab, i.e. facilities, traveling accomodations, tournament invites, coaching....that can help you grab that one extra good pitcher or batter and might give you an edge for this type of harrowing schedule.

Women's Softball played Auburn, UF, Notre Dame, Stanford, Michigan, Depaul, BCC- all finished in the top 25, and Michigan was the National Champion, and Stanford who finished 4th.  We also played, UCF, Seton Hall, Penn State, Louisville, Tennessee Tech, Hofstra, FAMU, and Iowa.  So the Softball team played 26 games against ranked and post season opponents.

The drop off in talent from D1 to DII is significant and the margin of error is eliminated.  With our type of schedules you can't hide, and regardless of coaching you either have talent or you don't.  The question remains how do you get that talent, and how much of it is necessary to be competitive.

[Big_Hairy_Bull]

Because it's all relative.  True, they do it with good coaching, but the players are not on-par with the I-A level, and in particular the competition USF faces.   USF faced seven teams that were ranked at one point this year, that's nationally ranked, in football, and five in softball.  They faced over a half-dozen first and second round potential draft pick pitchers.   The margin of error for USF in baseball, and softball is called slim and none.  We played UCF, Miami(Super Regional), USM, Tulane(World Series), ECU, UF(World Series), Army, Stetson, Wichita State, Louisiana-Lafayette, Quinnipiac, and TCU.  That makes 32 of our 64 games (50%) were against post season opponents- two which are in the College World Series and each has about a half-dozen major leaguers on their squads, and 18 against teams that were or are ranked.  

With that type of competition the margin of error is ZERO!  AND ANY EDGE you can grab, i.e. facilities, traveling accomodations, tournament invites, coaching....that can help you grab that one extra good pitcher or batter and might give you an edge for this type of harrowing schedule.

Women's Softball played Auburn, UF, Notre Dame, Stanford, Michigan, Depaul, BCC- all finished in the top 25, and Michigan was the National Champion, and Stanford who finished 4th.  We also played, UCF, Seton Hall, Penn State, Louisville, Tennessee Tech, Hofstra, FAMU, and Iowa.  So the Softball team played 26 games against ranked and post season opponents.

The drop off in talent from D1 to DII is significant and the margin of error is eliminated.  With our type of schedules you can't hide, and regardless of coaching you either have talent or you don't.  The question remains how do you get that talent, and how much of it is necessary to be competitive.

Thank you S. Bien. I couldn't have said it better myself regarding comparing DI to DII.

[fscmoc]

Sorry, I guess I'm not making my thoughts very clear

on this subject.

I didn't mean to imply that the quality of teams were the same between D1 and D2. It's obvious that they are

not when taking both divisions as a whole. However, the

bottom 32 teams that made the baseball regionals for D1 this year would have tough time getting a winning percentage against Florida Southern or UNF.

The comparison is made about coaches coming in and recruiting players to facilities that are not even close

to a lot of their competition in the same division. It is also a comparison to coaches not getting the best players in HS but being able to see "potential" and

developing those players to their fullest so that in 2 years they will become topline players-and continue

the pipeline to success year in and year out.

Good coaches develop what they have to work with-they don't make excuses-and yes it really does help if

you can recruit the best talent available.

Contrary to much opinion on this board-This year's baseball team had as much talent as almost every

team we played. We were lacking at short and second

but our hitting "potential" was second to none. Our pitching "potential"-although young put it to UF in two

straight games and was brilliant at times.

Consistency was the key and the question needs to be asked, "Why were we able beat Florida twice, take Tulane into extra innings twice(beat them the third game), play well against other CUSA teams and lose

to teams like Eastern Michigan and Kent State?"

The answer is NOT facilities, folks. We have the talent now. It needs to be coached properly.

Woolard is committed to improving all athletic venues

so it IS going to happen, but if all it takes is having a

nice place to play why do we need coaches?

Again, it is not one or the other-it is both together. But

until that happens the coaching HAS to make up the difference.

[Brad]

Consistency was the key and the question needs to be asked, "Why were we able beat Florida twice, take Tulane into extra innings twice(beat them the third game), play well against other CUSA teams and lose to teams like Eastern Michigan and Kent State?"

This is the same type of questioning that hounded Seth Greenberg.  How could we play well against a top team and then get drummed by an opponent we were supposed to beat?  I think most drew the conclusion Seth was not a good floor coach.  We didn't win the ones we were supposed to, and many attributed that to the coach and the lack of preparation and game management ability.

[Guest S.  Bien]

Sorry, I guess I'm not making my thoughts very clear

on this subject.

I didn't mean to imply that the quality of teams were the same between D1 and D2. It's obvious that they are

not when taking both divisions as a whole. However, the

bottom 32 teams that made the baseball regionals for D1 this year would have tough time getting a winning percentage against Florida Southern or UNF.

The comparison is made about coaches coming in and recruiting players to facilities that are not even close

to a lot of their competition in the same division. It is also a comparison to coaches not getting the best players in HS but being able to see "potential" and

developing those players to their fullest so that in 2 years they will become topline players-and continue

the pipeline to success year in and year out.

Good coaches develop what they have to work with-they don't make excuses-and yes it really does help if

you can recruit the best talent available.

Contrary to much opinion on this board-This year's baseball team had as much talent as almost every

team we played. We were lacking at short and second

but our hitting "potential" was second to none. Our pitching "potential"-although young put it to UF in two

straight games and was brilliant at times.

Consistency was the key and the question needs to be asked, "Why were we able beat Florida twice, take Tulane into extra innings twice(beat them the third game), play well against other CUSA teams and lose

to teams like Eastern Michigan and Kent State?"

The answer is NOT facilities, folks. We have the talent now. It needs to be coached properly.

Woolard is committed to improving all athletic venues

so it IS going to happen, but if all it takes is having a

nice place to play why do we need coaches?

Again, it is not one or the other-it is both together. But

until that happens the coaching HAS to make up the difference.

The problem with this argument about facilities versus coaching is that somewhere in between lies the truth.  No one can deny that to some extent Carderi and crew have lost some quality recruits because of inferior facilities.  There are many examples, and to deny is just being ignorant or narrow-minded.  However, we also must agree that at some point a coach must win, and build tradition regardless of the facilities- which is why we see some programs with good facilities but not winning.

To me it's pretty obvious the past few years that Eddie's teams have always been one pitcher, and about 1-2 hitters away from being good.  The problem is attrition never allows him to really catch up.  

I think you put it best when you said it's not ONE OR THE OTHER, but both.  We need good facilities, and good players combined with solid coaching if we ever want to reach a Super Regional, and consistently make post-season tourney's. However, until the facilities come up to par then our coaching staff needs to make up the difference.  With planned improvements already on the drawing, and plans stage it's now an easy reality to sell, and with the new sports medicine facility for all sports that should be used as a selling point as well.

Basically, the staff's excuses are dwindling, and expectations are growing.  They soon will have everything they need from a facilities standpoint but can we wait over those 3-4 more years while that's being developed for Carderi's programs to hopefully, possibly, maybe blossom.   We had a young team this year, I really believe next year, with the easier BE baseball, is Carderi's make-or-break year.  I expect a solid winning record and a high likelihood of post-season play.  Anything less would be severely disappointing and be indicative a change is necessary.

[Sitting_BULL]

Dude, you really think the baseball team loses when it plays REAL 1-A teams?  It is actually the opposite. They usually play well or beat the REAL teams and lose to the par or sub-par teams.

They swept Fl this year who is in the College World Series and had 3 one run games with the #1 team in the country!

Anyways, you can't compare a Div. II school's winning to a Div 1 school. Totally different scenario!

Well first of all, I wasn't comparing winning @ div II with div I, I said the opposite.  When our successful div II football team moved to div I, it found there was no comparison.

As for basbull, I know they've been beating quality 1-A programs.  That was my point...they never get an "easy schedule."  As sbien pointed out, half their games were against playoff teams, most of the other half were still pretty good 1-A programs.  With that tough a schedule, you need eveything in place and facilities are part of the puzzle.