Well, the black art of recruiting is a pretty complicated subject in and of itself, and it does present a sort of Catch-22 problem: How do you become great without first getting great recruits, and how do you get great recruits without first becoming great? This is not to say that the current Gopher pitchers are bad; rather, the program just seems to need to add a couple of additional stars to add into the current mix in order to be a winner in playoff tournament atmospheres.
It's not that Northern kids can't play baseball. If that were the case, then programs like LSU wouldn't feel the need to constantly recruit kids out of Northern high schools. Forgetting for a moment about the absurdly-talented Curt Leskanics and Paul Byrds and Brett Laxtons of the distant past ... in the last 6 years, half of LSU's top 6 pitching stars were from Northern states. Lane Mestepey, Jared Bradford, & Louis Coleman were from LA, AL, & MS, but Brian Wilson (still pitching for the SF Giants), Ryan Verdugo, & Anthony Ranaudo were from NH, WA, & NJ. Not that these places are anywhere near MN, but then again, they aren't anywhere near LA either.
In my opinion, the #1 problem the Gophers have in recruiting is a lack of interest in baseball in the conference as a whole at the higher levels of athletic administrations (and many West Coast schools have shown that it IS possible to have great baseball programs without having great home attendance figures). For a typical high school phenom pitcher living somewhere in Pennsylvania or Connecticut or Michigan or Colorado--Why go to a Big Ten school when you can play in the Big East or Big XII or Sun Belt? Somebody has to find a way to address this crucial question.
I don't mean to minimize the difficulty in the problems faced with Big Ten schools in recruiting, many of which are beyond their control. I'm just saying, if a Big Ten team like the Gophers were just able to find a way to recruit 1 or 2 big-name pitchers a year nationally--from outside the local areas--then that team would probably have a very good shot at making it into the CWS on a semi-regular basis.
In comparison, offense is not that big of a problem. As one example among many, Texas is the #1 national seed this year, and the Longhorn offense is absolutely atrocious--almost total garbage, in fact. They struggled to score 3 runs against the 7th-best ACC team in 25 innings, and weren't much better against 4-seed Army. (And, of course, getting Texas State--whom they didn't even play--as the 2-seed in their regional was a generous gift.) The Horns just have all the arms.
The Gopher team this year was really not that far away from making a super regional. One more win in conference play, and there may have been a Minneapolis regional instead of one in Louisville--and had you gotten Middle Tennessee, Vanderbilt, & Indiana, as your competition like the Cardinals did (rather than having to play the best program in college baseball over the last 20 years at their own place), who knows? The Gophers might well be preparing for a super regional right now.
BOTTOM LINE: With such a venerable and stable coaching staff, it just seems to be me that all the Gopher baseball program is missing for even greater future success is the ability to go across the nation and pluck out a few choice arms-for-hire (from JuCos, if necessary) whenever the need arises. It would help, of course, if other Big Ten teams started doing the same thing.