Recent content by rwlarson

I think Schwartz, Susa, and maybe Easton on the top tier. Then Snippes, Cosgriff, Hooper, Chard, Richardson, Breezy. After that, Werner, Jones, Grayson. Those are the only players off the top of my head who have shown anything, and even the majority of those haven’t shown enough to make me think...

Sad to see such a big fan of volleyball as Ruffda was at one time become so disillusioned with the state of affairs that s/he completely disappears from volleyball chat boards. S/He had a lot of good insight over the years. I’d like to know when s/he started to see the writing on the wall. Was...

Who are the elite coaches? Seems like the ones we like to think of as elite still have needed the best players to win national championships.

In this new era, we need to see who all goes portaling before we can start talking about next year. Hopefully, no more post Fall Ball losses. Those are the ones that hurt the most because you don’t have a fair shot at replacing those players.

Unfortunately we lose both Valencia and Krapf so we’d better strike gold in recruiting impact offensive freshman (or two).

By killing it, I was referring to bringing in impact players, who were instrumental in winning a B1G tournament championship and getting the program back to the NCAA Tournament. Ybarra and Felder were huge for them in achieving both. Ybarra was an All American, but they both were key cogs in...

I agree it will be more difficult for Coach P to quickly build a consistent winner here if they don’t have a successful season next year because she will need the positive vibes as she will be relying on new recruits and the portal much more than she has so far. But I have no doubt that she...

Agreed that Bahl in the circle makes them dangerous. But they’d been going to NCAA tournaments in the last few pre-Bahl years after some very lean years. When you are just a stud pitcher away from being really good and competitive against anyone, I can live with that. I was envious when Ohio...

And to think five years ago Minnesota was near the top of the softball world while Rhonda Revelle nearly lost her job due to allegations of “toxic culture” and player abuse. And Jordy Bahl had committed to Oklahoma at about that time. Revelle (like Piper a school legend as a pitcher) was...

In B1G play, yes. They have some non-conference games coming up though. But there’s more than a strong possibility that the Gophers will not qualify for the B1G tournament.

If she comes to the B1G she has Ohio State written all over her.

Unfortunately, Oregon is a bad team to come see if you want to avoid seeing blowout losses. I don’t know that Michigan is much better, but I’d trust us against them more than Oregon. If you came, I hope they get a really good pitching performance tonight.

The Dawn Staleys and Geno Auriemmas of the world can do that and get away with it most of the time, once they have established that they are elite coaches. The hard part is working your way into that position and kudos to them they were able to do it.

We just need a recruiter that hits home runs with the players they bring in. The previous hitting coach didn’t teach Oakland how to hit.

I’ll be very surprised if Piper isn’t given two years after this one no matter how bad the team performs in the field. Softball just isn’t enough of a priority here that coaches are fired just for losing unless it becomes more than 5-6 years straight.