Some perspective on Pat Murphy

I’m trying to imagine giving a shite about any women’s sport that much.

He has too many weddings to perform.

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With all that said not sure why he didn't run your G1 starter the full 7 instead of making her pitch both.

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Briski started getting hit hard in the second inning. Who knows what would have happened of she had stayed in. The way Canady pitched I don’t think it would have mattered,

So who do you replace him with that is sure to do better? And how much will it cost? And how much are we willing to spend on the roster? $5 million? We obviously aren’t spending much now. Alabama has only three transfer players on the roster. And Alabama regularly started two true freshmen.

The fact that Alabama was one of the last four teams still playing is amazing considering all that.

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I'm sure even I myself could coach the softball team into not winning a national title.

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Who will win a conference championship 1/3 of the time, make the WCWS over 1/2 the time, make the championship game every 10 years or so and win a national championship every 15 years or so.

Who can Alabama hire that will do that? Because if they can’t do that or better than we’d be better off with Murphy.

Once you get this better coach, how much are you willing to spend to be able to field a roster capable of beating the Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, and UCLA rosters of the world.

Who do you suggest? And who is going to pitch in the $5 million a year to spend on softball NIL?

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I'm sure even I myself could coach the softball team into not winning a national title.

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I have no doubt you could coach this Alabama team into not winning a national championship. But I am also not sure you couldn’t coach this Texas Tech team to a championship.

UCLA is the best all-time program in the history of softball. They have won 13 national championships in the last 44 seasons. And Texas Tech went and poached their best player in the portal. They did the same thing to 5 other teams. They might still be in the finals if they didn’t have a coach.

Pat Murphy has been the same for years. Amazing pitching, great regular seasons, can make it to OKC and might even win a few games there.

But when it comes to the semis or the finals - the biggest games of the year against the best teams - the bats go ice cold and the elite pitching can’t sustain.

He hasn’t been to the finals in 12 going on 13 years. The one national title seems like forever ago and yet Murphy keeps doing the same shite and the hardcore fans just shrug and say “he built it, it’s his, that’s our Murph!”

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I’m trying to imagine giving a shite about any women’s sport that much.

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This is the correct perspective.

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But when it comes to the semis or the finals - the biggest games of the year against the best teams - the bats go ice cold and the elite pitching can’t sustain.

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Exactly. They run into elite pitching. When you get to the final four there are no bad teams. If a team made it that far they had to have great pitching.

Typically pitching beats hitting. Alabama had the misfortune of running into two of the top five pitchers in softball yesterday. That is the advantage that Texas Tech has. They have two all-American pitchers. When one struggles they have the luxury of swapping them. And Canady was on yesterday. Here was her day: 9.2 innings pitched, 5 hits allowed, 1 run allowed, 10 strikeouts, 1 walk, a 0.76 ERA, 2 wins to run her season record to 29-6.

Alabama had Briski, also an all-american. But when she was tired or just was off a hair Alabama replaced her with a freshman. A very good freshman. But not an experienced All-american.

You can argue that Murphy’s style of play is not conducive to winning championships. That is fair. Debatable but fair. But this season Alabama was impressive offensively and the same thing happened. They scored 4 runs in game one. And against Terry and Canady you better make that count. That walk-off homerun in game one was soul crushing. After that game two was just a formality.

If you had swapped coaches yesterday the results would have been the same. Alabama softball now has the same problem Alabama baseball had for years (and still does). They simply don’t have the roster to be a truly elite team. The programs who spend the most on softball are Oklahoma, Texas, Texas Tech and UCLA.

It is not a coincidence that since 2022 when NIL really started rolling, 9 of the 10 teams to make the finals have been one of those teams. All five national champions will be one of those teams.

If you want Alabama to become the top program in college softball you will have to give it that level of support. If you aren’t willing to do that it will be almost impossible to hire a coach better than Murphy. And even if you do, it won’t matter.

It is frustrating seeing Alabama make it to the WCWS but fail to win it all. But it isn’t as frustrating as not ever seeing them make it to there.

It seems to be a Rant philosophy that it is better to completely flame out in the regular season and miss the post season instead of being one of the last 8 teams standing but lose. I think that is retarded, but we see it over and over here.

And have you ever heard the one about the grass not always being greener on the other side? Just hiring a new coach does not guarantee that you hired a better coach.

Exact same situation as Karen Weekly. At least yall have won a natty. We will forever be haunted by the Monica Abott missed opportunity