Gillespie top pitcher
Gunderson and Bryce first team and Poteet second team.
Congratulations!!!
Just reflecting on the year, and I am so grateful for Coach Woodard, and the staff. They do an incredible job. Toby, Doc Rodriguez, and the whole crew are first class. It’s easy to forget that we are still a bit behind the 8 ball as it applies to facilities compared to some conference peers.
These guys work the portal, and turn in solid year after solid year after solid year.
The bottom of the league absolutely must get better. Conference ranking killed us this year. Rice is well on their way. There’s no excuse for Wichita and UAB to finish where they did. Memphis has always struggled with baseball to my knowledge. It’s too hard to have to rely on winning the conference tournament, and that’s the position we were in this year. This league has some of the best coaches in the country, and I am extremely thankful that Woody and Co are in our corner.
clt says we sound like memphis mbb fans, but the bottom of The American was bigly bad
I think the staff has done a great job adjusting to the portal / NIL era. We got an entire new infield and a Friday ace out of the portal including several that ended up being all conference players. I expect that they will continue to keep us competitive in the market this offseason.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about UTSA. They have a good team, but they didn’t really play a tough non- con schedule. They just won a bunch of games in conference. Their Non-con SOS was 149 & ours was 78.
I really liked our schedule this year. It was easier than the gauntlet from last year, but good enough to get an at large. We were probably just a few wins from an at-large.
I think playing tough teams early on exposes weaknesses so that we can work to adjust before conference play. As a fan, I like seeing us play high level programs, but as a conference, do we need to schedule a few more wins? I’m torn. It seems like it no longer matters who you beat, it only matters that you get wins.
Here’s the non-con SOS with (overall RPI) from this season:
UTSA 149 (25)
CLT 78 (65)
USF 49 (81)
FAU 91 (62)
ECU 33 (66)
Tulane 196 (107)
WSU 29 (164)
Rice 74 (209)
UAB 132 (165)
Memphis 215 (217)
Time to change the staff up
Huh? 1234
You’d think that would be enough to at least hang a Regional banner on the wall.
We had one of our best overall pitching staffs that we’ve had in a long time this season. The numbers showed it and the eye test showed it. I certainly felt like we were much deeper than we’ve been in the past, and our pitching was good enough to make a run.
We struggled offensively all season. It took awhile for some of the new guys to get going and when they did, others started struggling. I don’t think we were ever hitting on all cylinders offensively. We led the league in HRs but also led the league in Ks. Then, our best offensive player broke his hand and missed the last 3 weeks of the season. It is hard to recover from that and make a regional run.
Overall a good season. We won 36 games and finished 2nd in the conference. We just had a frustrating ending. Only 7 teams on program history had more wins than this team, to put it in perspective.
Is Gunderson expected to return next season? Also, is there ANY chance Gillespie comes back? I know he is at the draft combine.
Gillespie’s stock is probably as high as it can get right now. I suck at predicting the draft but I’d expect he’d be on the similar level as Wyatt Hudepohl. 4th Rd $500k
Gunderson is draft eligible, but is still injured. I don’t know what his stock looks like at this point, but I would expect him back. You never know in today’s landscape though.
I think July 1 is the portal deadline.
Thanks.