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Post by UICJohn on May 28, 2021 22:17:17 GMT -6
UIC baseball season ends as they win Thursday but get destroyed by Wright State and lose to Milwaukee in the losers bracket. Don’t even make the championship game.
A failure of a season.
They are miles behind Wright State.
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Post by Big D on May 29, 2021 11:10:03 GMT -6
Frustrating for sure. We had a history of success in the league, THEN we get one of the best stadiums in college baseball, and we’ve been unable to keep it going. It hasn’t helped that we’ve had a number of big time recruits (e.g. Ben Hernandez, and the guy that went to the Cubs 2/3 years ago) get drafted out of high school so they never play a single game for us, and a number of disloyal transfers (e.g. Hampe) poached from us since major teams treat us like a farm system. The year we had like 5 or 6 players drafted where we almost won that NCAA game (was it against Mississippi?) really felt like it was the last hurrah since we had to do some serious rebuilding/reloading after that and the players we were rebuilding/reloading with got drafted, transferred, etc., so it didn’t pan out. Credit to the coaches for securing commitments from these players in the first place. If only they could’ve played a couple years for us. Keep going after them!
It’s really hard to be a fan at a mid-major school. Honestly, in the end, the most you can really hope for is bragging rights in state or against conference foes. Once you get to the national level, you have very little chance to experience success against the big boys that have a stranglehold on winning. Had we won the HL, we would’ve gotten a bum seed and bounced after two games. Look at softball. We’ve rebuilt and are winning the HL again, but can’t win at NCAAs. Soccer may be our best hope. But even then…when was the last time we won a game after the first round (in essentially a play-in game against another local team like Loyola, Northwestern, or NIU)? Basketball…the HL will be a perennial 14-15 seed going forward. No chance. Where we do build some momentum and look to be on an upswing (women’s soccer), we’ll fire a coach (if they don’t take another job) for who knows what reasons.
The whole thing just kind of blows. I know this sounds hopeless…it feels that way as I’m writing it…but it’s the truth. I hope all of our coaches can turn things around.
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