Another year, another Bianco choke job in the postseason

I'll at least say Bianco doesn't deserve to be compared to that miserable excuse of a head coach. Bianco can actually coach and knows his game. Luke is just the village idiot on the sidelines

quote:

---

Chase Parham: As @nicksuss pointed out, opposing hitters the second time through the order are hitting .625 against Hoglund this season. Ezell was 2nd time though. Numbers point to shorter leash. #RebsBSB

---

Basically everyone but Mike could see it coming

This is going to be long; and don’t get me wrong—I’m not happy with virtually nonexistent success in June.

Bianco won actual hardware last season, something nearly everyone on this board was unhappy with due to the June failure (again, not happy but it’s a trophy—2 if you count the division). Bianco has shown that he can win conference titles: 2 tournaments and one regular season championship but has yet to break through and win the big one (something only one out of ~250 teams do each year.)

Let’s move on to the roster: Bianco has brought in top talent. No one can deny that, with the #1 class in 2016 and #4 class in 2019 (success tbd). Has he underachieved with this junior class? Absolutely. We had a legitimate title team last year that got fricked over in the regional. This season we had an entirely new rotation, with two of our three guys being true freshman. Some would say we overachieved with this team due to our weekend losses, some would say we underachieved with our offense. I’d personally say a super game 3 is damn good for us this year. Not to mention we would’ve beaten any non SEC team apart from maybe FSU in the supers but the committee decided to pair all conference foes up this year.

My only question to you is who can we feasibly get that is ACTUALLY better than him?
Keep in mind State was hiring a new coach last season. Also keep in mind that State missed out on the top guys. Then don’t forget that State is better than us historically.

Now run down a list of coaches who are consistently better than Bianco and would actually be willing to leave their job. All SEC coaches are out of the equation. No big guys would leave where they currently are (DVH, Manieri, Corbin, etc.) Vitello is in a lesser job but is he actually better than Mike? What about former assistants? No way the ECU or Louisville guys leave their jobs. Pat Casey is staying in retirement (for now at least.) Unless you plan on bringing in an unproven assistant you’ll more than likely be making a lateral or downward move.

It also needs to be said that before Bianco our program was basically irrelevant since the 70’s. He’s taken us to the postseason 16 times this century. Something that would’ve been unimaginable when he was hired.

All of that being said, would I take a better coach/recruiter if we got one? Of course. But I don’t think it’s as simple to find someone better than what we have now as you’re making it out to be

Bianco had to make a super at the beginning of the season, and here we are in a super. Sucks to lose, especially in this fashion, and it still feels like we completely underwhelmed, but being a game away from Omaha only to lose to a team that’s on paper been better than us all season isn’t the WAOMmiest thing we could do. More disappointing that we clearly showed we could beat Arkansas and simply couldn’t do shite today

Arkansas and State are literally the two best baseball programs not to win a title. It’s disappointing than Bianco can own DVH when it’s not on the line, and way more disappointing that State can find coaches off the street to take them to Omaha, but it’s not preposterous that schools that have consistently cared about baseball since long before Bianco even got into town consistently find success.

If like Auburn and Georgia consistently outperform us I’d be way more worried, especially since they’ve made recent hires. It sucks that our three biggest baseball rivals are three of the best baseball programs in the history of the sport, and it sucks that we simply haven’t found a way to make to Omaha more than once since the 70s.

We can’t fire Bianco even if we wanted to anyway. No Chancellor and no AD. And being a game away from Omaha while keeping an elite recruiting class intact buys Bianco until at least 2021. I’m sure Arkansas, LSU, and State will still be good then too, because that’s what good programs in the SEC West do

Someone said we couldn't get ECUs head coach from them.

We ended up exactly where most of us said we had to end up at the beginning of the season. It’s only frustrating because the past three weeks have been the only time we’ve played to our potential with any level of consistency all season

This team underachieved, and it’s right to be mad about that, but at the end of the day we were a game away from Omaha, and that’s the second best result we’ve had in over a decade

Boy, this is a barrage of good points y'all make. What sticks with me most after today and this season, other than getting drilled 14-1 with the season on the line, is Bianco's quote post game that "nobody would have expected this team to be where it was today a month ago." The question is why not? As somebody else said, we vastly underachieved all season. Had we taken care of business much better all season, like we should have, we would have never had to travel to Arkansas in the first place. I guess expectations are much higher and have been for some time, but we were soooo blah all season outside of the last couple weeks before the chickens came home to roost today. We will very much miss the presence of some guys, but a more blue color, hard nosed, livelier bunch is needed and so many of these guys just were not that this year.

quote:

---

The question is why not? 

---

Exactly. We were top 10 the first few weeks of the year and he got cocky with his coaching. Certain players had success over inferior teams that Bianco decided that is what they could do all season and made no changes to his method. Horrible decisions on keeping pitchers in too long, bad batting calls, and don't get me started on baserunning.

Then you have our outfield. You have a left fielder in Dillard who can't run down a ball and can't make a throw home. Why not adjust the outfield to have Dillard at DH, servideo at right and elko in left? Like today's game, he took Adams out, servideo at 2nd, and elko in right. Bad judgement.