re: LSU is embarassing themselves right now

I don’t know if LSU is considered the Premier program anymore. It’s not because of lack of resources, facilities, and fan support. I personally think what you see is what you get with the current cpm regime with consistency issues, blowing title opportunities I.e. last year. Can Mainieri turn around the consistency issues and bring the title back to BR? Sure, but it will need a solid PIP. Most of CPm’s great recruiting efforts that he had a heavy hand in netted no titles. I cannot fully credit CPM for Recruiting the entire 09 title team.

And I think many LSU fans don’t see it or refuse to see the inevitable. There are 2 better skippers in our own conference much less the country. Some on the Rant need to realize we are not in 97 or 2000 any more. I expect to be ripped by the Champion’s Club Sunshine pumpers... you can rip me for being honest all you want. No hard feelings. Geaux Tigers..

Lets be honest. LSU made it to the regional based upon a great month of May and a moonshot AB by a pitcher. The deficiencies of this team still exist.

You will get blasted for speaking the truth. The good thing is that there are only a handful of people who actually believe we are well coached and loaded with talent.

I think LSU would be in a little bit better shape if they had a healthy Walker, Hilliard, Labas, and Smith!!!

It's damn tough to lose your starting SS at the beginning of the season, and 2-3 of your top 5 pitchers. LSU is Forced to start Hughes (who's held his own on defense), but obviously could use more time to develop from a strength and approach standpoint at the plate.

Maybe Manieri's biggest problem is the off-season program needs to focus more on injury prevention and/or he needs to give his pitchers a shorter leash, but it could be that injuries happen, and certain years bite you worse than others.

If Oregon State's pitching staff was down 2-3 of their best and they were missing a player like Madrigal (or Kwan), they'd likely not be hosting a regional, and going into a tough matchup on the road.

I will criticize Manieri for his inability to teach the fundamental of bunting. I've never seen a team that is supposed to be a top tier team as bad at bunting as LSU. It has cost us big this year in a few games. Not sure if the outcome last night would've been any different, but could've opened up the scoring a little more and who knows.

We’ve had some teams that didn’t even make the tournament.

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RealityTiger

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checks out

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And they still made it to a regional despite a ton of injuries. Says a lot about how great this program has been.

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roger

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that.

And just a week ago this Tiger team beat FLA 11-0. Is FLA an embarrassment?

This team is undeserving of this. We were in the championship game last season. We lost most of the stars of that team to the draft so it would have been hard for any team to overcome that. Yet we were poised to do that and return a very strong team and got dealt a ridiculous amount of injuries.
The loss of Walker, Storz, and Smith cannot be understated. We definitely overachieved considering all that. Thanks to the emergence of Bain, Peterson, and Hilliard we put up a decent squad.
Were there some things we could have done better? Yeah, sure. I would have liked to see what our offense would have looked like if we had hired the best hitting coach money can buy. It's not like we don't have the money.
As far as our lack of bunting skills. That is what happens when you have a team of top recruits. These boys have gone through high school NOT bunting because they were stars. Many of them will be getting drafted and they will not be using bunting skills in the majors. Teams that use great bunting skills often do it out of necessity since they don't have the offensive skills to crush it. Once we saw how shitty our offense was looking this season could CPM put some extra practice on our bunting skills? Maybe. Its not Mainieri's style though and I can't see him changing. But anybody that thinks he needs to go needs to think again. Replace him with who? He is a great coach and it really shows in the post season. A lot of great things a baseball coach does are things that we don't see like managing personalities and egos. Lose Mainieri and we will really find out what it's like to suck on a regular basis until we find another great coach.
We are in position to do something exciting today and win two games. Cam Sanders is a special talent that will blow people away if he continues to develop and returns next year. Evening game we can win but it will be with us running on fumes. If we win both today, and have to play Monday, I can't imagine who would pitch but I wouldn't mind finding out. NW is running on fumes with pitching already. Oregon if I'm not mistaken has already used their two best pitchers. Could see some high scoring games today.
Cut this team some slack. We are very spoiled because we are usually in the hunt for a championship. Some years are tougher than others.