Two things can be true at the same time.
I’m sure part of it was waiting on full funding from the big 12.
Kendall is full of crap. He is not as locked in on college baseball as you would think.
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If I remember correctly, Rogers and Whitting are tight. Roger’s doesn’t see the UH fan base supporting his platform, so I don’t expect much positivity.
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Kendall is getting that from Todd. He loves Todd and believed anything he told him.
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Yep.
Jackson is one of the worst coaches in the country. That would be a horrendous hire. He sucked at Memphis and has been pathetic at Mizzou. There is only one reason he has a D1 job. Nobody is hiring him at Houston.
If, as someone had written, the NIL budget is in the low six figures, that would make it very hard to win a national championship. UH cant compete with the multi-million $ NIL of a dozen or so programs, but I would think that if they hire someone who comes in and turns the program around there would be enough interest to significantly raise the NIL to be a team that could be a regional team most if not all years and periodically a super-regional and even Omaha contender.
The talent is here in Houston and in Texas. The player development facility (which is much more important to the players than the spectator seating) is good. The stadium could use some upgrade over time, but is similar sized to other B12 schools other than TxTech, TCU and OK State - also for reference the 1 ranked UCLA team has stadium that only seats 1,700.
If Nunez is not either trying to hire Hallmark or at least seriously looking at him, he is a fool. The guy has long Texas roots, growing up in Houston, playing at Rice, coaching there for over a decade and then head coach at UIW for two years and UTSA for six excluding Covid year.
At both, he immediately turned those programs around in the first year. UIW had six straight losing seasons and both years he was there they had winning seasons and finished much higher in the Southland. Before he arrived at UTSA, their highest conference finish over the prior six years years had been 5th. The worst UTSA has finished in Hallmark’s six years (excluding Covid) is 3rd. They won the conference last year and beat Texas in the regionals before losing to UCLA in the Supers. This year they again won the conference and should be in the regionals.
He has done this at UTSA with much fewer resources than other schools in the American Conference. They have a high school size bleacher stadium with port-a potties for the players, no player development facilities to speak of, basically no NIL and very few scholarships.
He is a tough coach, speaks his mind and is hard on his players - but he knows baseball and knows how to win. I had two boys who grew up here and played college ball and know alot of the Houston and Texas based guys who have played college ball over the past decade or so. Just like the guys who have played for Kelvin Sampson, they will tell you he is a very demanding, tough and at times difficult coach, but he truly cares about them as human beings and most would tell you they would run through a brick wall for him.
I know there are other good coaches out there to consider, but if Kendall Rogers has heard that Nunez isn’t interviewing or considering Hallmark, I believe he is making huge mistake and likely passing on the best candidate to turn UH around and make it nationally relevant again.
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That’s exactly what I thought.
Kendall lives in Spring and use to be at UH games quite a bit. He can pick up the phone and talk directly with Whitting if he wants.
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“ending a 16-year tenure that was one of the longest in school history.”
It was. Except for the Frank Anderson years, it was excruciatingly long.
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We are on our 2nd longest streak in school history of not making an NCAA Regional. The program definitely went downhill after Anderson left for Tennessee.
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A guy I know who knows a guy told me Lance Berkman is sniffing around the job.
Also if Nunez hires any of those four other guys mentioned earlier from Missouri, or Mississippi or wherever those guys are from. He is incapable of running this process.
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Send him this link: Smileol Silicone Waterproof Swimming Nose Plugs, Adults, Fluorescent Colors, Set of 4 - Walmart.com
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Just saw on Twitter that Tulane’s Jay Uhlman is a candidate.
There was a troll Tulane account promoting that.
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Was it a funding issue when Nunez gave a women’s basketball coach $600,000 a year?
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Don’t believe that for a second. If Nunez hires a lower level coach, like the Tulane coach, who has only gotten lucky in a couple of American tournaments to get into the ,NCAA tournament (one of those teams won 15 games that year), then Nunez needs to be railroaded out of town. Some of these names are just a joke. They should never be considered. The Mizzou coach throwing his name out there is beyond laughable. Either these coaches are throwing their names out there to try get a better deal at the school they are at now by leaking their name to the media, they are in danger of losing their job they currently have like Jackson, or they are really good candidates who know how good of a job running the Houston program can be. Some of us have been saying for years that there was going to be major interest in this job and it is coming to fruition. This will be a huge test for Nunez. This isn’t women’s basketball. We will see if he understands college basketball or not and we will see if he is up to the challenge pretty quickly.
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I’m late to the game. Just woke up to the news.
HALLELUJAH!!!
Also UT associate head coach Nolan Cain was listed as a candidate on the Chronicle this morning. He is a proven winner everywhere he’s been and is a big-time recruiter for Texas.
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We could do worse!
I truly hope you are right!