From what I have read on another board not much of a chance that Lance gets hired. Differences between him and administration.
1 Like
I have been one to say we need to stick with Whitting but hypothetically if we moved on I would look strongly at Berkman. If Rice wont hire him for political reasons he might just jump on the opportunity to stick it to them. He is a Houston guy with strong connections in the community. I would think local players would want to play for a Houston legend and former big league star.
His potential staff could be comprised of people like Biggio, Clemens, Pettite, Noble, Paul Janish, etc. If we really want a change, this is the best direction to look at. These guys are not primarily influenced by money and this would make national headlines. Its a recruiting war in Houston against the Aggies, Longhorns, Baylor, TCU and Rice and this is the best way to generate some excitement.
I’m sure Sean Allen is a fine choice, but recruits won’t be jumping at the opportunity to play for a UT assistant coming into a subpar program.
2 Likes
Do any of these guys actually coach?
We tried the “hire a superstar” thing in basketball–didn’t work.
IMO, you don’t need to be a superstar to recruit well. From all accounts I’ve heard, Noble was kind of a jerk. But he got some really good players here.
Recruiting’s more about wearing out the shoe leather, making connections. Every one of the kids that speaks highly of our basketball staff says they keep in daily contact with the kid. It’s showing you care.
And hiring solid assistants (who can recruit and coach) is the next step. Again, we’ve seen where the inability to hire good offensive assistants really hurt Tony Levine, despite being a great recruiter and otherwise a solid administrator. Whitting had good assistants until 3 or 4 years ago, and we’ve gone down the crapper since then. That’s probably not a coincidence.
I have no interest in Rice’s former players unless they’ve proven already they are good coaches, recruiters and scholarship managers.
3 Likes
Not sure how successful Berkman would be. But He has been coaching for awhile now first at Second Baptist and now an assistant at St Thomas. So he is paying his dues somewhat.
Rice changed the way they admit athletes which directly hurt baseball. Ain’t no way a national level program falls off like that without a major internal factor. They bent their admittance rules then but also they had an easy in with top inner city talent or the Bellaire/Lamar pipeline but HISD doesn’t produce that kind of talent anymore
Honestly - those kids you mentioned in the outer burbs don’t grow up dreaming about UH. If they’re going to pay for college they’ll rather be a back rotation guy at UT/A&M.
What hurts is like Rice - you could get a diamond in the rough or a legit guy if the local schools kept producing kids. They would understand UH more and the environment. But when it dried up to your now recruiting kids from the burbs and their mindsets on inner city is way different than the older kids who grew up in the first round of burbs inside the beltway
1 Like
I love The Big Puma as an Astro, but hire a Rice alum to coach UH Baseball…? Nah.
2 Likes
Whoever wins. I don’t care where they went to school.
7 Likes
Many will not agree with this but having just recently having gone through it all trust me, 95% of the kids do not care if it’s TU, TAMU, UH or Lamar. Sure they might have grown up a Coog, Ag, etc but the desire to keep playing far over-rides that. They just want a place to keep on playing. There are no free rides in baseball any way, they’re just hoping to get some help on paying for school. No excuses for not getting far more top local talent than we have in last few years
4 Likes
For 90% of good/great high school athletes this might be true, they want to feel wanted and just given a chance to continue their career D1. The top 10% of Houston kids is what we should be after. They arent going to go to UH for Sean Allen or Johnny up and comer Assistant. They want to to join a winning/nationally competitive team (which we arent right now) or a big name hire (like Berkman) and go play for a former big league star.
They want to tell their buddies or their parents that Lance Berkman wants me to play for him. Thats how an 18 year old kid thinks.
A Houston kid going into his senior year hasn’t seen Berkman play in an Astros uniform since they were in kindergarten. I doubt they would have a very strong connection to him, so maybe we should hire someone based off their coaching ability instead of their name.
9 Likes
Again - these kids - and if they’re from a UT family, etc. they’ll pay to join those programs first unless we have something they can’t here.
Trying to recruit Houston first will get you fired one today’s environment. You get them on the back end. Take the basketball approach.
But baseball is a different sport so you gotta move meticulously
1 Like
Yeah the Legacy kids ie: Clemens, etc will go, otherwise it’s where ever gives them best chance to play. Hope I don’t seem like a jerk just went through to whole process in 2018. While we weren’t the Banditos, were just a small notch below. Every kid went on to play at least 1 season at next level. 3 kids were drafted out of HS ( 2 pitchers and catcher ) We had college/pro workout day for 3 years running. Invitations were sent out to all local/S Tx colleges and pro scouts. Not once did UH ever show up
We used to hear stories like this back in the dark times in basketball and football.
I remember one of the big stars on UT football back when we had a home game against UT. He was interviewed on local sports radio. He was from Galveston or Laporte or somewhere east. He was asked why he didn’t consider UH. He said he would have, but no one from UH ever met with him or talked with him or made an offer.
I think Sampson is showing that it’s about a lot of things, but a big, big part is getting to know the kids and staying very involved with them.
UH baseball used to recruit pretty well. It can again if someone is willing to put the work in. Wasn’t it Gene Keady who said, “Recruiting is like shaving. You have to do it every day or you look like a bum.”
3 Likes
Recruiting Houston used to be fairly easy. It the mid 90’s through mid 2000s there were a handful of select teams that pooled together all the local talent from all over. It was easy for a UH coach to pick up 3 or 4 kids on each team (I remember the Angels, Wildcats, Kyle Chapman, Heat, and others) because they could go to a game and see all the top prospects pitch is one game or tournament. Those teams were not really built on a making money premise.
Now you have 1,000 local select teams with each one claiming to be the best. And if you can pay thousands of dollars for a season, you can be on one of their 8 teams labeled as their Gold, Black, Silver, Red, etc. teams. The competition is more watered down and spread out. A few programs like Marrucui, Twelve, Hunter Pence Academy, Banditos stand out above the rest, but it makes recruiting much more difficult. College baseball programs typically have one recruiter. That is a lot of ground to cover these days.
2 Likes
Yes Sir, there are plenty of $$$ballers out there…but it’s also a pretty close knit community, the top players are pretty much spread among a few teams for the most part. BBUSA use to be the center but Premier passed it up few years ago with top shelf tournaments, college summer league and facilities. For whatever reason UH just didn’t seem to have much of a presence even at the legit local PG/V-Tool. Hopefully things are changing and can get more top local kids along with rest getting from all over.
2 Likes
The day I see roger clemens in a UH uniform will be the day I start relying on Jason Schreiber’s Alvin CC Dolphins for 100 percent of my college baseball fix.
My sentiments exactly. Being a former MLB superstar doesn’t mean success as a college baseball coach. I thought kids would line up to play for Tony Gywnn at SDSU, but it didn’t work out that way. I’m still pulling for Sean Allen. Years of D1 experience contributing to David Pierce’s success is worth more than name recognition. Looking at where Pierce’s team is now, I can’t help but think that could be us had the previous AD put a little more thought into Noble’s replacement.
1 Like
It’ll be interesting this off-season. If Whitting has a plan to shake things up and Pez and the boosters agree, he’ll likely get another year. If he comes in and tries to stick with Rooney and Esposito, there would be a huge push to bring in Sean Allen.
Problem with the current staff is that Whittingis a good coordinator, money-raiser, Rooney is a good recruiter and Esposito is a good recruiter. There is nothing in regards to player development on this staff; basically why we see these good classes come in, and then don’t do anything. We had a number of potential draft picks coming into this season and this is what we have to show for it.
Whitting really needs to find another Frank Anderson and Trip Couch or we need to move on. Can’t have another Rayner Noble situation.
10 Likes
The timing is perfect for Sean Allen to come home. This is an opportunity that does not come often. The issue is about money and uta. Do we have it to make that move and will uta let this happen. uta might have already told Sean that he will be uta’s next baseball coach.
Sean Allen checks all the boxes from recruiting to assembling a great coaching staff. Furthermore this will be seen as a P5 move on our part. I sure hope that we can find the money to make this homecoming move happen.
4 Likes
Welcome back Pray ! We’ve missed you, hope all is getting better. Thoughts and prayers to you and yours
3 Likes