Ruckus wrote:. However, it is concerning when I see us make fundamental errors and mistakes year and year out, i.e. doing stupid crap. Like getting picked off, repeatedly missing cut off men which allow runners to take the extra base, booting routine balls, and failing to get bunts down or simply fielding a bunt and getting an out. It is these types of things that add fuel to the fire of those who find fault with the program or hire. .
Wouldn't this have a bunch to do with the quality of the players that Wofford can really go after AND wouldn't the number of players that a coach could recruit with more scholarships help solve this problem.
The way I see it is that a coach with limited funds has to try to field as complete a team as possible with limited resources. There are not a bunch of really talented kids on the bench in underfunded programs to press the starters due to the numbers the coach has to work with.
A year or so ago I laid out an explanation about position players getting the NCAA min. of 25% and starting pitchers really needing 50% offers to be able to compete with the other offers these same kids get from Wofford's competition(i. e. the other schools looking at the same kid).
I also said I thought you needed 5 starters and one closer and needed to hope they stayed healthy.( this would call for the use of 3 full scholarships). Then add about 6 middle relievers at 25% each for 1.5 more scholarships.
Then you need 8 position player, a DH and at least a backup outfielder, backup middle infielder and a backup catcher. All these need 25% each for a total of 3 scholarships.
So just to be able to make the tournament you need 7.5. This is about what Furman has had for the last 10 years.
The extra 4.2 scholarships that the NCAA allows is for a team to have competition for starting jobs and replacements for kids that do not pan out, get injured, can not figure out the fundamentals( like throwing to the cutoff man) or just have no desire to play after they see the number of hours it takes to play this game at the D1 level.