One more baseball post then I move on...Smoke Laval

He definitely wasn't as terrible as some make him out to be. I went to a pitcher/catcher camp my senior year (Fall 2002) and got to talk to him and liked him a lot.

But as the poster above said.. expectations were just so high after Skip. 99% of programs would love to have the success Smoke had in his short run at LSU

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but was he that bad?

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Yes. He was a terrible judge of character for his recruits. And he pissed off every big baseball donor, even referring to them as "the enemy." (I heard him say it.)

Skip cultivated fan support for the baseball program. Laval went out of his way to destroy it.

He was pretty much in an impossible situation. It was either win it all or it wasn’t going to work out.

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He was never mentioned as a coach on "Hold The Rope"

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He’s still quite bitter, I thought enough time had passed he way want let it go but nah he still refused to take part. Fat a-hole

He never deserved the job in the first place, failed, and then tried to burn the house down on his way out by being a rat. Dude sucks

following skip was never going to be easy...then going 2 and out both of his first trips to CWS didn't help the lofty expectations.

i spoke to friend who played for both.

he said skip told you what time to get up, what time to be at breakfast, what to wear, and what time to get on the bus to get to the park.

he said smoke knew the game in and out, but was probably more suited for pro players as his approach was more, we'll take some BP around 1pm before the game. i'll see y'all then. college kids need\needed a little more guidance\direction\leadership.

The last 5 or so seasons before this one is somewhat similar to the Smoke years basically. He did make the CWS twice but didnt win a single game in either appearance.

Smoke in his 5th and final season failed to make the NCAAT though which was his instant demise. We hadnt missed the tournament in like almost 20 years or something when that happened. I think if the 2020 season played out for Mainieri I think we also might not have made the tournament that season. We truly got off to a ROUGH start, 7-5 at one point...and that team just could not put up offense. We were hititng like .250 through 17 games and completely wasting our rotation of Henry, Marceaux and Labas.

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Smoke Laval

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= Mike Archer. Had a skill set but was in over his head when promoted from within to the top job.

s a bonus, Smoke's personality destroyed any goodwill he earned under Skip.

Smoke spent too much time away from the facility. Back then, folks involved with the program used to joke about how you could never find him.

He's one of those guys who knows everything there is to know about baseball but had no business running a program on the level of LSU.

Like most coaches replacing a legend he was destined to fail because of the expectations. Also all of Turtle Thomas recruits would always get drafted in the top 3 rounds of the draft, however Smoke and Turtle was able to leave Paul with Dean, Schimpf, Jared Mitchell, and Ochinko.