I’d be surprised if he’s under any pressure from above. The only caveat that I’d add to that is the possibility that Hill wants to hire his own guy. I doubt that is on his mind given the context of what all he has on his plate, but I suppose it’s possible.
Realistically, hiw many years does Hibbs have left anyway? Hes been doing this a long time. Surely retirement is weighing on his mind, unless he just loves the game that much.
He’s almost 58 years old and has been head coaching here for 27 years.
P.S. his wife has been Director of Athletic Academic Center for 27 years as well.
Full pension is after 30 years of service, or after 25 years of service if age 60+, so they’re eligible in 2-3 years.
That’s young in terms of retirement. Especially if you enjoy what you do.
Yep, Wayne Graham of Rice coached into his 80’s!
Golf and soccer have been 1 and 2 I’d say.
I was told that the across-the-board goal for our teams is to finish in the top 4 in the conference. There are only a few that regularly do, and baseball is closer than most. I cannot imagine focusing on rebuilding that program to get from 6th to 3rd, when we have so many others that can go from 12th-14th to 6th with very little disruption.
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Hill also spoke about Baseball can be a revenue sport during the interview process. That’s why I’m curious about the level of pressure around the staff.
Wayne Graham took Rice to multiple college world series and won 1 or 2 championships, I don’t think we’ve ever made it to a super regional. We have to find a way to get over the 3rd/4th place hump or start winning some of our top tier out of conference games to put us in a position for at large bids. I don’t know if Hibbs is the guy to get us over that hump or not but I’d hate to see where the program and facilities would be had he not been here.
Baseball definitely could be produce more revenue. To make it happen we’ll have to change our approach completely. This is where I expect Hill/Fuller to make changes. Game day experience, etc.
Like there should have been an observation deck on top of the IPF. Could have had a Norm’s Tavern up there!!!
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Baseball can be a revenue sport here, and I think the product on the field is good enough. The game day atmosphere, the marketing , tailgating etc. is what is really lacking. I actually believe that we had a better gameday atmosphere in our A-10 days. Our last season there we were Top 50 in the nation in attendance (I thikn we were #49). We also had a really cool spot to tailgate next to the intramural fields.
We used to have an active and vocal student section. It has pretty much diminished. I don’t know what happened, but I think it might be a carryover affect from the demise of our students being active at Halton. We’ve had really good teams the past 2 seasons, better talent-wise than most of our NCAA Tourney teams. Hopefully Hill/ Fuller have things in mind to create a better atmosphere.
I agree. That would have been really cool. I think if Mike Hill had been here just a year sooner, he might have signed off on something like that, but it is what it is. Baseball was working with limited funds as it was.
I’m looking forward to seeing the master plan this summer. I think you will see something like that in the future at the Hayes.
I think that could be accomplished quite easily with a temporary raised wood/aluminum structure down the left field line. They better be drinking with their head on a swivel though unless netting is installed.
We got at-large bids (IIRC) once or twice back in the Metro.
The timeframe in which Loren adjusted and made us a decent conference CUSA team is the blueprint about how long it’s goingvto take Healy and Sanchez to do the same.
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It’s definitely carry over, loosing students in Halton meant loosing students in soccer and baseball as well. I participated in a slowly dying standing loud group of people the whole way through college. By the end it was really sad to see.
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Interesting comparison Tintin. I wonder if folks would be happy with basketball following that path? Below are baseball’s results since joining C-USA from the A-10 for reference:
We lost lots of seniors and Juniors Tyler Barnett & Justin Seager to the draft from that final A-10 team that T-1st. Then threw a bunch of freshman in the line-up in our first season of C-USA and took some lumps. Pro guys like Jarrett and Nichting were among those freshman. Then the 2nd wave with Netzer, Hampton, Maciejewski, Laws. There was a clear transformation of the roster from A-10 level to C-USA level talent. You can see that by the amount of guys we’ve sent to pro ball.
2014 RPI 169 Finished 12th in C-USA
2015 RPI 155 Finished 10th in C-USA
2016 RPI 158 Finished 8th in C-USA and made the Conf Tournament
2017 RPI 57 Finished T-3rd in C-USA and made Tourney Semifinals
2018 RPI 80 Finished 4th in C-USA and made Tourney Semifinals
Yeah, I thought he was older given the number of years he has been here.
ugg…down 2-0 in the 3rd to Morehead State…this is getting bad early…dang, Carter Foster (DH) just homered in the 3rd. The man has batted 3 times this season and has 2 hits (including the homer). Get the man in more often.