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

quote:

---

Made omaha twice but was 2 and q both times. Then missed the ncaa tournament the year after that.

---

He made the NCAAT the year after the second 0-2 CWS appearance. LSU was eliminated by Rice in the Regional.

LSU hosted regionals in his first 4 years as HC. They reached the Super Regionals in year 1, CWS in years 2 and 3, and Regionals in year 4.

By most objective metrics Smoke was a successful HC, Unfortunately for him, those metrics also included the fact he was replacing a guy who won 5 national championships in 10 years. At that time, anything short of playing for a National Championship was seen as disappointing. He had a bad year in 2006 and Skip pulled the plug because, I guess, he could see the program was trending downwards.

With Johnson winning the NC, the Smoke era will be viewed even more as the "forgotten era". But the reality is he wasn't that bad...just not good enough.

quote:

---

Made omaha twice but was 2 and q both times. Then missed the ncaa tournament the year after that. The expectation was sky high after skip, just liked the next bama football coach will have massive expectations, missing the ncaa tournament was a fireable offense after how high the program was just right before

---

Sveral things happened all around the time Smoke took over, Several other SEC schools developed programs similar to TOPS allowing a little more flexibility for scholarships, the expected SEC school recruiting pitch that LSU was on the down because Skip was retiring (much like when the Bear retired and when Saban will) huge spending by other schools copying what SKIP did somewhat leveling the field. No Smoke wasn't bad at all. But he wasn't elite.