The ACC is awfully good in baseball.
by WilfordBrimley (2017-06-01 00:34:01)
Edited on 2017-06-01 00:38:33

In reply to: After 4 years in the ACC, what do you think about the status  posted by MPG

Post Reply Return to Jake's Field

No excuses at all for Aoki, because if IU and, especially, Oregon State can have some success, there is no reason that ND cannot, but this is a damn difficult conference now. It is comparable to the SEC and PAC 12 (ranks ahead of the PAC 12 in RPI right now, for that matter) and Big XII. It's definitely the best baseball conference ND has ever been in, and really, that should be a selling point when recruiting against Michigan and IU and virtually every other Midwestern and East Coast program.

An elite program with which I am familiar - Louisville - absolutely feasts off good Midwestern recruits (McDonnell basically sweeps the Midwest for almost all of his good players). This isn't football, and there are a lot of good prospects to be found in Illinois and Indiana and Pennsylvania and Michigan and Ohio; take a look at the origins of Louisville's bevy of draft prospects from the last decade - a few are from Kentucky but most are from the Midwest. Tuition is a problem, but that can be overcome with the right support.

9 Louisville players are from Kentuckiana and
by ProV1x  (2017-06-12 18:09:33)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Reply to Post

3 more are from nearby. Louisville has always been a baseball town since back before Mr. Hillerich carved that first bat for Pete Browning. Louisville was also once a major league franchise and might still be today except for politics.
ACC is difficult, but ....
by NDoggie78  (2017-06-05 10:59:50)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Reply to Post

Using the "Northern" excuse is getting old.
These northern schools (north of the Ohio River) made the tourney:
Oregon St
Holy Cross
Yale
Nebraska
St. Johns
Delaware
Illinois-Chicago
Michigan
Iowa
Indiana
Ohio
Xavier
Oral Roberts
Marist
Central Connecticut State

Granted, many made it because their conferences are much weaker than the ACC, but can we actually argue we should have been in the tourney ahead of these teams?

Your Louisville example is great - while not really a "northern" team, they aren't a really a southern team either. If Notre Dame had McDonnell, I think we would have close to the same success as he is having at UofL.
Of course McDonnell was the highest paid baseball coach in the NCAA (UF passed this with O'Sullivan's contract last year), so would ND actually come up with the $$$ for the right coach?