re: Ranking the SEC baseball coaches

Arkansas was not a baseball power in 2004. That was a cinderella season and a team with little MLB talent. Arkansas was predicted close to dead last that year.

It took him until the 2009 season to get to Omaha again and they finished 14-15 in the SEC. That team wasn't loaded. Yet Arkansas was not a powerhouse.

Then they went again in 2012 with a team that was 16-14 in the SEC. That team had more talent than the others at this point. Arkansas was good but still not considered a powerhouse.

Then they made it again in 2015. This team wasn't as good as the one in 2012 especially the pitching. The momentum was building but it wasn't quite safe to call Arkansas a power at this point.

His best year was in 2018. This was the year that Arkansas could finally be called a baseball power.

The next year Arkansas made back to back CWS apperances for the first time ever in its almost entire 50 year history. This was the first time Arkansas won 20 games in an SEC season since 1999.

DVH took over a program that had very little history and no fan support and made it a powerhouse with great fan support.

That was the Norm DeBriyn era.

Corbin is basically Jack legget 2.0 . I think he would probably be about the same as him at other places . That said winning talks. Would Nick Saban be as successful at say SC? Probably not.

So I still have Corbin and Sully at 1, because of their consistency, regardless of anything else.

Had Ray Tanner stayed at SC he would be #1....sadly he didn’t.

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Truth is LSU and Vandy have huge built in advantages over most other schools

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Don't Florida and South Carolina also have TOPS-like scholarship programs? None compare to Vandy's scholarship advantage, but TOPS is better than what Arkansas, State, and OM have.

If Bama and auburn are winning, their coaches should be higher. They are the only schools playing with only the allotted 12 schollies. They are having to develop a team of half walk ons.
Lotto states have an enormous advantage and vandy has such an unfair advantage I can't believe that loophole exists.

Put corben at Bama or auburn and I'll bet he's not number one.

Even he said once on jox radio if he had to play with 11.9 schollies candy baseball would be dead.

Just really can't compare baseball coaches.

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You start with Corbin

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I'll allow it due to Natties being so huge, but Sully has every other metric in his favor over Corbin.

I don't care for head to head comparisons. I look at the final results. DVH took over a struggling baseball program and elevated to a height it has never seen in program history. The naysayers preach that he couldn't take it to the next level and get over the hump. But how do you expect to get over the hump where we never been? It isn't like we made multiple CWS finals. The first was in 1979 and the last in 18. That is a 29 year difference. We don't have that kind of history.

DVH may seem mediocre to places such as LSU or Texas that have much better history but I have no doubt he has done a very good job at place like Arkansas where they had little history and low expectations to begin with.

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But how do you expect to get over the hump where we never been?

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Because programs like Florida and Vandy, just in this conference, had coaches come in and do just that.

When O'Sullivan took over at Florida, they were a solid program. Andy Lopez had done some good things, and Pat McMahon after that. However, they had only been to Omaha 5 times in their history, and they had made the NCAAT a total of 23 times. O'Sullivan, taking over in 2008, has never missed the NCAAT and has made the CWS 7 times in 12 years (excluding last season for obvious reasons) with 1 national title. He took over a program that still has middling fan support, and only just recently did the school finally invest in the program with the building of a new facility.

When Corbin took over at Vanderbilt in 2003, Vandy was arguably the worst program in the SEC. They had never made it to Omaha and had only made the NCAAT 3 times. Since taking over, he has made the NCAAT 15 times, only missing out in his first and third seasons. They have made it every year from 2006-present. He has taken them to Omaha 4 times with 2 national titles. He's also won the conference regular season title an additional 4 times, setting a record in 2013 with 26 conference wins. Also just a fun fact, but Corbin did something in 2019 that only one other coach in league history has done: win the SEC regular season title, win the SEC tournament, make it to Omaha, and win the national title. The only other coach to do it was Paul Mainieri in 2009. Not even Skip Bertman ever did all of that in the same season.

To a lesser extent, look at Mike Bianco at Ole Miss. The Ole Miss fanbase has grown very anxious with him plenty over his time there, given he has never been able to "get over the hump" and that program was in much more dire straits than Arkansas was when DVH took over. When Bianco took the job at Ole Miss in 2001, they had only been to the NCAAT 6 times in program history, and they hadn't been to Omaha since 1972. Since taking over that job, he's been to the NCAAT 16 times in 18 years, only missing the NCAAT in 2002 and 2011. He's been to the super regionals 6 times and Omaha once. He's taken that program to heights it's never seen. The stadium and fan support is night and day different from what it was prior. I remember going to an LSU game in the mid 90s and it was almost exclusively LSU fans. Now that venue is viewed as one of the best in college baseball. But all that said, people still expect more, and no one is arguing that he is a top 3 coach in this league.

I think the only valid arguments for the top 2 coaches in the SEC are O'Sullivan and Corbin. I also would have a hard time putting DVH over Mainieri given Mainieri's success not only at LSU but also at Notre Dame. And if people think it's close, I think the H2H between them,i shuts down any other argument. I think a fair top 5, as of today, would be

1. Corbin
2. O'Sullivan
3. Mainieri
4. DVH
5. Bianco

There are certainly some young coaches in the league that may move up into that territory, but those 5 guys have established themselves over a long period of time in this league.

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Don't Florida and South Carolina also have TOPS-like scholarship programs?

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Yes, so does Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Florida, and Georgia