Hitting, power hitting and run production seem to be down the last few years. You could worry about pitching holding p all day but power at the plate won a lot of games. It was more entertaining too. Mainieri built the club for Omaha (smaller ball) not as entertaining. And the pitching injuries and lack of left handers cost last year. It'll be a couple more years of the same or worse before his seat gets hot.
I'd say it did a lot to save Wade, if you remember this shamdemic hit right at the same time they released the "tapes" and that stuff quickly got shuffled to the back and almost forgotten. Dickhead Vitale will likely not forget but no one really listens to him anyway.
Skip found the perfect storm at LSU. He found a school that shared his belief that baseball should be a sport of emphasis, at a time when there were very few other schools in the nation that would agree. More importantly, he found a fan base that would rally around success no matter where it happened. For all the great things you would hear about the few highly successful programs that were built before Skip/LSU - thinking specifically USC, Texas, Oklahoma St, Miami and Arizona St - the thing you didn't hear was that they got such great fan support that they could become financially self sustaining. I'd go so far as to say that so far, the Mt. Rushmore of college baseball has only 2 faces, Dedeux for his success and Skip for his success model. Who else belongs?
