Now What???

[woopig5]

Congrats on a nice opening series. Team was competitive, pitching looked good, hit the ball pretty well one game, and the community\fans had a reason to be excited. Now that you’ve had a chance to reflect a bit – what needs to be worked on for the Bulldogs to improve?

Facilities – Need work, but the effort is underway.

Attendance – What can be done to improve the fan experience with the facilities you have now? You guys seemed to enjoy the pig roast promotion.

Schedule – At 33-25 last year you guys ended up #89 in the RPI (Boyd’s). Not of fan of the RPI, but you’ve got to improve here. The SEC, Big 12, and some C-USA schools are close geographically (TX\LA\MS\AL), so the travel costs are reasonable. Three examples...

* Troy (AL) in the Sun Belt plays Ark., Bama, Auburn, S. Miss., Miss. State, Coastal Carolina, and Michigan out of conference (OOC) this year.
* Elon (SC) in the Southern conf. plays Virginia, Coastal Carolina, Miami, UNC Wilmington, N. Carolina, S. Carolina, Wake Forest, and Clemson OOC this year.
* TCU (TX) in the Mountain West plays Oral Roberts, Coastal Carolina, UNC-Wilmington, Notre Dame, NC State, Rice, TX Tech, TX A&M, Oklahoma, Baylor, and UC-Santa Barbara OOC this year.

Is becoming a perennial regional team the goal, and is it a possibility now or in the near future?

WPS

[Tech77]

Good questions, thanks.

I think our schedules of the past have been a bit brutal for the talent we had. Now I think we can start to step it up again.

Winning will probably cure a lot of the attendance prooblem, hopefully.

There is definitely need for some more facilities improvement. Coach Simoneaux has just about done everything he can with limited resources. The things that are left take a financial commitment from the administration. Hopefully, they'll get on board.

When Simoneaux took over this program, he said his goal was to get us to the College World Series. A lot of people laughed, but he was serious.

First step, make the NCAA regionals. Hopefully, that happens this year.

Louisiana Tech was a strong baseball school in the 70s and 80s. Often in the Top 25. Hopefully we're headed there again.

[TECH88]

Congrats on a nice opening series. Team was competitive, pitching looked good, hit the ball pretty well one game, and the community\fans had a reason to be excited. Now that you’ve had a chance to reflect a bit – what needs to be worked on for the Bulldogs to improve?

Facilities – Need work, but the effort is underway.

Attendance – What can be done to improve the fan experience with the facilities you have now? You guys seemed to enjoy the pig roast promotion.

Schedule – At 33-25 last year you guys ended up #89 in the RPI (Boyd’s). Not of fan of the RPI, but you’ve got to improve here. The SEC, Big 12, and some C-USA schools are close geographically (TX\LA\MS\AL), so the travel costs are reasonable. Three examples...

* Troy (AL) in the Sun Belt plays Ark., Bama, Auburn, S. Miss., Miss. State, Coastal Carolina, and Michigan out of conference (OOC) this year.
* Elon (SC) in the Southern conf. plays Virginia, Coastal Carolina, Miami, UNC Wilmington, N. Carolina, S. Carolina, Wake Forest, and Clemson OOC this year.
* TCU (TX) in the Mountain West plays Oral Roberts, Coastal Carolina, UNC-Wilmington, Notre Dame, NC State, Rice, TX Tech, TX A&M, Oklahoma, Baylor, and UC-Santa Barbara OOC this year.

Is becoming a perennial regional team the goal, and is it a possibility now or in the near future?

WPS

Competitive?? Heck, we had you guys on the ropes Fri and Sun, and then we proceeded to pound your 4th ranked team Sat night. IMO, I think you need to come up with a better word to describe our team. Trust me, you don't want to meet us again in a regional.

BTW, if we were as fortunate as you guys to have a Sam Walton donate hundreds of millions then yes, we would have "nice" facilities but we don't so some of us have to earn it the hard way.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the compliments, but for some reason I detected a tone of arrogance in your post.

[hambone29]

i also detected arrogance. any arkansas fan who watched those games would not be too cocky about winning that series. "Trust me, you don't want to meet us again in a regional." couldn't have said it better myself...

[dhussdawg]

Congrats on a nice opening series. Team was competitive, pitching looked good, hit the ball pretty well one game, and the community\fans had a reason to be excited. Now that you’ve had a chance to reflect a bit – what needs to be worked on for the Bulldogs to improve?

Facilities – Need work, but the effort is underway.

Attendance – What can be done to improve the fan experience with the facilities you have now? You guys seemed to enjoy the pig roast promotion.

Schedule – At 33-25 last year you guys ended up #89 in the RPI (Boyd’s). Not of fan of the RPI, but you’ve got to improve here. The SEC, Big 12, and some C-USA schools are close geographically (TX\LA\MS\AL), so the travel costs are reasonable. Three examples...

* Troy (AL) in the Sun Belt plays Ark., Bama, Auburn, S. Miss., Miss. State, Coastal Carolina, and Michigan out of conference (OOC) this year.
* Elon (SC) in the Southern conf. plays Virginia, Coastal Carolina, Miami, UNC Wilmington, N. Carolina, S. Carolina, Wake Forest, and Clemson OOC this year.
* TCU (TX) in the Mountain West plays Oral Roberts, Coastal Carolina, UNC-Wilmington, Notre Dame, NC State, Rice, TX Tech, TX A&M, Oklahoma, Baylor, and UC-Santa Barbara OOC this year.

Is becoming a perennial regional team the goal, and is it a possibility now or in the near future?

WPS

We hit ball one game, but you guys barely hit it all weekend. Your team hit 194 this weekend to our 245. We hit the ball well one game, yall hit the ball well one inning. Dont come on here and talk down to us like we are some team that lucked up and competed. This isnt the same team from 5 years ago. Give me a break.

[hambone29]

one more thing and i'll let it go...
there was one ass whippin this weekend, and though i had a few beers in me and it was extremely cold, i am pretty sure latech was not on the receiving end of that pounding. so i guess woopig is right, we were "competitive" this weekend...

[woopig5]

Congrats on a nice opening series. Team was competitive, pitching looked good, hit the ball pretty well one game, and the community\fans had a reason to be excited.

Where’s the arrogance?
- I congratulated you on a nice series.
- I complimented your pitching.
- I complimented you on hitting the ball well Sat. night (NO ONE hit the ball Friday night, Sunday, and the Hogs didn’t Saturday).
- I positively recognized the fan base

Knock that chip off your shoulder and learn how to accept some legitimate compliments.

Competitive?? Heck, we had you guys on the ropes Fri and Sun, and then we proceeded to pound your 4th ranked team Sat night. IMO, I think you need to come up with a better word to describe our team.

Competitive was an accurate description. Using your description, you had us on the ropes Fri and Sun, and LOST TWICE…at your place. Arkansas came out flat Friday, didn’t play well Saturday or Sunday – and still won 2 of 3. We found a strong new pitcher (closer Jeff Todd – the guy who closed you guys out twice) and a new infielder who swung the bat well (Coon was 4-6). Hogs know what the returning guys can do, and are looking for some additional new guys to produce at Troy this weekend. It’s way too early to get all up\down about anything yet.

BTW, if we were as fortunate as you guys to have a Sam Walton donate hundreds of millions then yes, we would have "nice" facilities but we don't so some of us have to earn it the hard way.

BTW, the Walton family had nothing to do with Arkansas’ baseball facilities (that would be basketball, and why they call the basketball arena – Bud Walton Arena).

I would say Arkansas’ baseball coaches have earned it. Coach Debriyn took the UA from an american legion field to George Cole Field then on to Baum Stadium through his ability to get private funding. Van Horn continued this ability to secure private funding and has expanded the number of permanent chair back seats to 10,000 (room for 13,000 total) and suites to 24 at the end of the current construction to be complete in two weeks.

"Trust me, you don't want to meet us again in a regional." couldn't have said it better myself...

GET to a regional, something you haven’t done in almost 20 years, before talking smack about one…

[hambone29]

holler at you in may!

[Tech77]

Were you here for the series? We experienced quite a bit of arrogance from Arkansas fans during the weekend, so we're probably a little touchy right now, but I'm sure many Hog fans who attended weren't pleased with some of us, either.

It was a good series, and I have to sum it up this way. Overall, Tech is a better hitting team than Arkansas at this stage. Overall, Arkansas has better pitching, which they desperately needed to hold Tech's hitting down enough to win two of three games. We made lots of loud outs. Arkansas really didn't hit very many balls hard, save the two home runs.

Hopefully we will get to meet in a regional soon. That would mean Tech made it there, and that's certainly what we're aiming for.

Where’s the arrogance?
- I congratulated you on a nice series.
- I complimented your pitching.
- I complimented you on hitting the ball well Sat. night (NO ONE hit the ball Friday night, Sunday, and the Hogs didn’t Saturday).
- I positively recognized the fan base

Knock that chip off your shoulder and learn how to accept some legitimate compliments.



Competitive was an accurate description. Using your description, you had us on the ropes Fri and Sun, and LOST TWICE…at your place. Arkansas came out flat Friday, didn’t play well Saturday or Sunday – and still won 2 of 3. We found a strong new pitcher (closer Jeff Todd – the guy who closed you guys out twice) and a new infielder who swung the bat well (Coon was 4-6). Hogs know what the returning guys can do, and are looking for some additional new guys to produce at Troy this weekend. It’s way too early to get all up\down about anything yet.



BTW, the Walton family had nothing to do with Arkansas’ baseball facilities (that would be basketball, and why they call the basketball arena – Bud Walton Arena).

I would say Arkansas’ baseball coaches have earned it. Coach Debriyn took the UA from an american legion field to George Cole Field then on to Baum Stadium through his ability to get private funding. Van Horn continued this ability to secure private funding and has expanded the number of permanent chair back seats to 10,000 (room for 13,000 total) and suites to 24 at the end of the current construction to be complete in two weeks.



GET to a regional, something you haven’t done in almost 20 years, before talking smack about one…

[GatorDawg]

Where’s the arrogance?
- I congratulated you on a nice series.
- I complimented your pitching.
- I complimented you on hitting the ball well Sat. night (NO ONE hit the ball Friday night, Sunday, and the Hogs didn’t Saturday).
- I positively recognized the fan base

Knock that chip off your shoulder and learn how to accept some legitimate compliments.



Competitive was an accurate description. Using your description, you had us on the ropes Fri and Sun, and LOST TWICE…at your place. Arkansas came out flat Friday, didn’t play well Saturday or Sunday – and still won 2 of 3. We found a strong new pitcher (closer Jeff Todd – the guy who closed you guys out twice) and a new infielder who swung the bat well (Coon was 4-6). Hogs know what the returning guys can do, and are looking for some additional new guys to produce at Troy this weekend. It’s way too early to get all up\down about anything yet.



BTW, the Walton family had nothing to do with Arkansas’ baseball facilities (that would be basketball, and why they call the basketball arena – Bud Walton Arena).

I would say Arkansas’ baseball coaches have earned it. Coach Debriyn took the UA from an american legion field to George Cole Field then on to Baum Stadium through his ability to get private funding. Van Horn continued this ability to secure private funding and has expanded the number of permanent chair back seats to 10,000 (room for 13,000 total) and suites to 24 at the end of the current construction to be complete in two weeks.



GET to a regional, something you haven’t done in almost 20 years, before talking smack about one…

Your arrogance comes from you telling us how to get better. Maybe you didn't mean it like that but that is the tone you had in your original post. And BTW your last line of this post also proves that point.

Now let's talk about the games. We out hit you and out pitched you. The only reason we lost is because of stupid mistakes. I will add in some blown critical calls but we should have overcome those. Walker is a piece of crap his diving act gave you the win on friday. But it was still our fault to allow the bases to even get loaded. Without the "HBP" in game one it could have been a Tech series win. But once again we screwed up by loading the bases.

Game 3 you have to look at the 3 errors. Sure you can talk about the Walker homerun but we lost the game when we couldn't field. After the benches cleared our team also went flat. Had our players gotten as fired up as Arkansas then we win that game as well. Please don't act like we got beat in this series. It was a close series and everyone came out flat. When we get to the regional I expect us to be much better off. And let's not forget our "Ace" for this year didn't even pitch yet.

[dhussdawg]

The most positive thing I took from the weekend is that pitching is going to be much stronger this year, IMO. Alsup, Hud looked great in long relieft. Jones looked good after a shaky FR year on the mound, hopefully a sign of things to come. Moseley looked good, which I had heard he was very dominant in summer ball. Burnett didnt pitch well, but he will get his groove. I hope Rupert can come back at full strength and we have to 2-3 guys step up to pitch during the week and pitch when needed during regional play. We also fielded well in the two games I saw.

Hitting-Courtney Jones looks legit. Many of the guys didnt hit that well, but pitching is usually ahead of hitting at this stage. I expect big years out of the Joneses, Rike, Cobb, Hud, Goulder, Kirsten, and others. We have depth at each position, which is something we sorely lacked just a few years ago. Sim has trouble deciding who to start now because of depth. We have some guys (Bascle and Grunewald) that could be starting at other D-I's right now. It used to be because he didnt know who could perform.

We just played a good series with Arkansas, a top-ranked program. It doesnt matter where it was played or what circumstances, it is great for us. Just a few years ago, Arkansas was wiping the floor with us, home or away at any point of the season. They did take two of three, but every game was close. No more 22-1 thumpings or anything like that.

Downs-Arkansas had as many fans as we did, sad. I dont know how to get more people out. I just sit there and wonder what in the hell else is going on in Lincoln Parish that we cannot draw a couple of thousand Tech fans to each game.
I think facilities are as good as they can get until our AD decides to let the purse strings loose for Sim.
Not having a visitor's bathroom is absolutely embarassing.
We need more timely hitting against good opponents like Arkansas. We had our chances and squandered many. How do you get picked off of first with the bases loaded and 1 out, brutal. We canno make those mistakes.

[hambone29]

giving our visitors locker room to our softball team is very bush league. hopefully we will take care of that. i know that sim has opposed that from the get-go. i agree with hussdawg, more positive than negative after this weekend. hopefully timely hits will come as the season progresses. and hopefully fans will come with wins.

[Tech77]

C'mon dhuss, I expect others to claim they had as many fans as we did, but not our own fans. Arkansas had what, 300 fans at the game? A very good number, but not nearly equal to the number we had. I do agree we didn't have nearly as many as we should have had. We should have overflowed the hills. Maybe that will come as people catch Diamond Dawg Fever.

The most positive thing I took from the weekend is that pitching is going to be much stronger this year, IMO. Alsup, Hud looked great in long relieft. Jones looked good after a shaky FR year on the mound, hopefully a sign of things to come. Moseley looked good, which I had heard he was very dominant in summer ball. Burnett didnt pitch well, but he will get his groove. I hope Rupert can come back at full strength and we have to 2-3 guys step up to pitch during the week and pitch when needed during regional play. We also fielded well in the two games I saw.

Hitting-Courtney Jones looks legit. Many of the guys didnt hit that well, but pitching is usually ahead of hitting at this stage. I expect big years out of the Joneses, Rike, Cobb, Hud, Goulder, Kirsten, and others. We have depth at each position, which is something we sorely lacked just a few years ago. Sim has trouble deciding who to start now because of depth. We have some guys (Bascle and Grunewald) that could be starting at other D-I's right now. It used to be because he didnt know who could perform.

We just played a good series with Arkansas, a top-ranked program. It doesnt matter where it was played or what circumstances, it is great for us. Just a few years ago, Arkansas was wiping the floor with us, home or away at any point of the season. They did take two of three, but every game was close. No more 22-1 thumpings or anything like that.

Downs-Arkansas had as many fans as we did, sad. I dont know how to get more people out. I just sit there and wonder what in the hell else is going on in Lincoln Parish that we cannot draw a couple of thousand Tech fans to each game.
I think facilities are as good as they can get until our AD decides to let the purse strings loose for Sim.
Not having a visitor's bathroom is absolutely embarassing.
We need more timely hitting against good opponents like Arkansas. We had our chances and squandered many. How do you get picked off of first with the bases loaded and 1 out, brutal. We canno make those mistakes.

[Brian96]

C'mon dhuss, I expect others to claim they had as many fans as we did, but not our own fans. Arkansas had what, 300 fans at the game? A very good number, but not nearly equal to the number we had. I do agree we didn't have nearly as many as we should have had. We should have overflowed the hills. Maybe that will come as people catch Diamond Dawg Fever.

I only went to the Friday night game, but it seemed like NLULM brought more fans to their game last year than the Hogs brought to this series. The far visitors bleachers were full about 2/3 of the way up with Hogs, and there were quite a few in the next section mixed in with a bunch of Tech students and fans. That was about it.

But it was still a very good showing from their side. I wish all our opponents brought that many.

[dhussdawg]

C'mon dhuss, I expect others to claim they had as many fans as we did, but not our own fans. Arkansas had what, 300 fans at the game? A very good number, but not nearly equal to the number we had. I do agree we didn't have nearly as many as we should have had. We should have overflowed the hills. Maybe that will come as people catch Diamond Dawg Fever.

I was in the OF so i cannot be for sure and I exaggerated, but it sure looked like a ton of maroon on Saturday. Friday wasnt as bad, but that isnt surprising. I barely made it to the game after work in Alexandria. I wouldnt imagine too many folks made it from NW Arkansas until Sat.