Minnesota

[coolonetoo]

John "Loser" Anderson and his Golden Gophers are in town this weekend so let's revisit his moronic suggestion that the Big Ten should quit participating in the NCAA tournament because it's just too hard to compete.

I hope Loser is paying attention to how the increased commitment to baseball by many league schools has resulted in dramatically improved results on the field, especially this season. Ironically, Minnesota has in part been one of those schools. It built a new facility--Siebert Field--just three years ago. Unfortunately for UM, it has not upgraded coaches, opting to stick with Loser. He's still throwing up his hands and scheduling Division III opponents. Four of them this season. Four! Surprisingly, no NAIA teams in 2015.

Personally, I hope they keep Loser around for years to come. Nebraska is 9-1 against him in Big Ten play and it's clear that trend should continue as long as he's in the dugout.

This weekend? Minnesota has a few good wins but has mostly been bad. A sweep is really in order but two wins will be acceptable. Losing the series would be an abject failure. I don't expect to see that, though.
.

 

[2bagger22]

While John is a whiner, he's coached the Gophers to 17 NCAA Tournaments in 33 years. Nebraska has only been to 13 NCAA Tournaments in its baseball history. Anderson is far from a loser.

 

[anon_umk0ifu6vj6zi]

Which makes his whining even more pathetic.
Posted from Rivals Mobile

 

[k9_r]

I think it's fair to call his proposal a loser. Abandon the NCAA and play summer ball will turn B1G baseball into a club sport where all local talent will go elsewhere to play for championships. That's a loser idea, right?

Yes, he won a lot of games and appeared in all those regionals but that was when regionals were truly geographic. Be one of the best in your corner of the country and you got in. There's a reason why Northern Colorado has ten CWS appearances and just three CWS wins. Even Maine had three CWS teams. Geographical regionals.

A whole lot of very good teams stayed home because the geographic regions had an equal number of spots to fill making room for lesser quality northern teams and crowding out quality southern teams.

So congratulations to Coach Anderson for all his success but it pretty much amounts to being a big fish in a little pond.

 

[coolonetoo]

Originally posted by 2bagger22:
While John is a whiner, he's coached the Gophers to 17 NCAA Tournaments in 33 years. Nebraska has only been to 13 NCAA Tournaments in its baseball history. Anderson is far from a loser.

I know what his record is. But I don't care what he did back in '88. This is loser talk:

Link

Nebraska had a head coach once who actually had a pretty good record. In fact, he's the all time leader in wins. But he was a loser. I personally heard him say very similar things. Yet his successors have had much more success despite the "disadvantages."
.

 

[sklarbodds]

Guy is a coward. Don't know him personally, but he obviously has no idea how his comments hurt his conference that was already struggling with perception.

 

[Lincoln gopher]

Originally posted by sklarbodds:
Guy is a coward. Don't know him personally, but he obviously has no idea how his comments hurt his conference that was already struggling with perception.

Coward is a pretty strong word, sklar. As a long time Minnesota fan and college baseball fan in general, I understand everyone's opinion on his ideas. Hell I would agree with most of you that is was poor idea. John Anderson the man and coach is hard to beat. He has a lot of baseball knowledge. He has helped dozens get into pro ball and has had great success on a national level. Many of his NCAA appearances came after the regionalized format. they last made a regional championship game in 2010. Minnesota's 3 national championships came during that era, but that was a long time ago. Now with all that said, again as a Gopher fan, I am glad that next year is John's last year as I think he has gotten lazy recruiting. I am ready for a change at Minnesota and certainly appreciated what Anderson has done. Some comments were made about their scheduling, I don't like playing small schools either, but sometimes it is tough to get teams to come to Minneapolis in the middle of the week for one game that has about a 50/50 chance of being cancelled. Minnesota did play both Texas and Houston early and play UC Irvine later this season.

This post was edited on 4/10 2:20 PM by Lincoln gopher

 

[2bagger22]

Originally posted by Lincoln gopher:

Originally posted by sklarbodds:
Guy is a coward. Don't know him personally, but he obviously has no idea how his comments hurt his conference that was already struggling with perception.

Coward is a pretty strong word, sklar. As a long time Minnesota fan and college baseball fan in general, I understand everyone's opinion on his ideas. Hell I would agree with most of you that is was poor idea. John Anderson the man and coach is hard to beat. He has a lot of baseball knowledge. He has helped dozens get into pro ball and has had great success on a national level. Many of his NCAA appearances came after the regionalized format. they last made a regional championship game in 2010. Minnesota's 3 national championships came during that era, but that was a long time ago. Now with all that said, again as a Gopher fan, I am glad that next year is John's last year as I think he has gotten lazy recruiting. I am ready for a change at Minnesota and certainly appreciated what Anderson has done. Some comments were made about their scheduling, I don't like playing small schools either, but sometimes it is tough to get teams to come to Minneapolis in the middle of the week for one game that has about a 50/50 chance of being cancelled. Minnesota did play both Texas and Houston early and play UC Irvine later this season.

This post was edited on 4/10 2:20 PM by Lincoln gopher

Lincoln,

Who's on your shortlist to take over when John steps down?

 

[sklarbodds]

Originally posted by Lincoln gopher:

Originally posted by sklarbodds:
Guy is a coward. Don't know him personally, but he obviously has no idea how his comments hurt his conference that was already struggling with perception.

Coward is a pretty strong word, sklar. As a long time Minnesota fan and college baseball fan in general, I understand everyone's opinion on his ideas. Hell I would agree with most of you that is was poor idea. John Anderson the man and coach is hard to beat. He has a lot of baseball knowledge. He has helped dozens get into pro ball and has had great success on a national level. Many of his NCAA appearances came after the regionalized format. they last made a regional championship game in 2010. Minnesota's 3 national championships came during that era, but that was a long time ago. Now with all that said, again as a Gopher fan, I am glad that next year is John's last year as I think he has gotten lazy recruiting. I am ready for a change at Minnesota and certainly appreciated what Anderson has done. Some comments were made about their scheduling, I don't like playing small schools either, but sometimes it is tough to get teams to come to Minneapolis in the middle of the week for one game that has about a 50/50 chance of being cancelled. Minnesota did play both Texas and Houston early and play UC Irvine later this season.

This post was edited on 4/10 2:20 PM by Lincoln gopher

Maybe I should say "His comments are cowardly". I don't like people that shy away from competition like that.

 

[coolonetoo]

Originally posted by sklarbodds:
Guy is a coward. Don't know him personally, but he obviously has no idea how his comments hurt his conference that was already struggling with perception.

This. Notice the headline? If one reads the article, it's clear the conference never really considered summer baseball. It's just the "dean of Big Ten coaches" that proposed the idea. And that's what leads.

I was certainly glad to hear Darin Erstad's comments at the time: "I'm totally against it - 100 percent against it."
.

This post was edited on 4/10 3:39 PM by coolonetoo

 

[coolonetoo]

I'll agree coward is a bit strong. I didn't know about his planned retirement after next season...
.

 

[Lincoln gopher]

Just found out the news that he is done after next year, so haven't thought about it much yet. Most of his assistants are his age. The Gophers did hire a former player as assistant pitching coach, Scott Matya, but he doesn't have much experience yet.

 

[RobsterMobster]

Originally posted by Lincoln gopher:
Just found out the news that he is done after next year, so haven't thought about it much yet. Most of his assistants are his age. The Gophers did hire a former player as assistant pitching coach, Scott Matya, but he doesn't have much experience yet.

I think John moving on is a great thing for Minny. They can get a decent coach (much like Iowa did), keep local talent and surrounding state talent home, and develop them into a regional team (much like Illinois or Ohio State has been recently). I think with John is he didn't want to adapt but would rather keep things simple and easy, which goes against the whole point of competition and that's why you find many who fins his words "cowardly" so to speak.

The truth is results are what matter and his results haven't been there the last few years, his mentality will probably explain why. Erstad's goal was a CWS Title or bust, now that of course is left to be seen but its a much better mentality and recipe for success than John's. Hopefully Minny can get someone with that mentality because I do think they have enough to be a consistent regional participant.

 

[donahues17]

Well nothing like getting the early jinx in. He is now 9-2 against us in conference. This Husker team needs to hit the batting cages something fierce.