Originally Posted by
Dixonfor6
Comparing LB to Skip is completely off-base. Skip won some bowls but never won a conference title. His bowl wins were against teams on our level—even a struggling Miami team. He really never knocked off a big opponent.. simply showed up and gave them a game AKA “competed”… also I do not sense a lack of institutional control among our baseball team. I do not see a great collapse in performance, discipline, or fan involvement in our baseball program. I also don’t see a ton of professional players on an underachieving team. We overachieved this season after losing so much offense. If you told me we would win a regional game say halfway through this year I may have laughed. We really battled back and showed a resiliency that no Holtz team had. And we won a conference title with clutch performances.
I will take LB and his “flaws” because the main one is he stays with a pitcher a batter or an inning too long.
That is a way to build his confidence throughout the year. You’re our guy, we all have a bad inning, I trust you to battle back. He gives them the chance. Honestly, that would maybe work at a program with overall higher talent pitchers. He does it with older guys who aren’t going to necessarily improve in their 5th-6th year… but he won’t hand the ball to a sophomore with the bases loaded. Maybe that is a part of him building for the future. The young guns and guys that don’t play much know they can pitch without having anxiety over being yanked after two hits given up.
Baseball always has “the game within the game” and LB has us as good as we have ever been and I really believe he understand the game and his guys better than we do. As long as we are winning and playing for a national championship, we should probably shut up and let the man do his job.