Has anybody else noticed this? Following the series finale at Arkansas, CTW greeted their coach with a quick hug. Then his head began moving back and forth as if indicating "no", and he appears to continue speaking. Then the Arkansas coach's facial expression changes from smile to disbelief. They disengage, but the Arky coach continues to wear an expression of disbelief at whatever he said. Following today's finale at SC, he greeted their HC with a handshake while continuing to talk and gesturing with his left hand and his head moving in that same "no" gesture. Immediately behind SC's head coach is an assisstant coach. The assistant coach's expression changes to anger and then it's clear to me that she (the assisstant) says to CTW, "That's bulls..t." while pointing at him angrily, then repeats "That's bulls..t." CTW says something to the assistant, who replies, "C'mon" (as in, 'c'mon, man'). Then the camera cuts away. Two series losses; two instances where it appears CTW says something disagreeable, maybe unsportsmanlike, to the winning coaches immediately following the game. It didn't look good to me.
I noticed it a couple weeks ago. Thought it was odd but didn’t see anybody mention it. Weird. I’ll go back and look at todays.
Referring to the Ongoing Softball thread: That thread has a post about CTW questioning the umpires about the ball being used. While talking to the SC coach after the game, some of CTW's hand gestures looked like he was holding an imaginary softball. Then the SC assistant got mad. Hmm.
If SC was using illegal balls whatever that is then CTW has a reason to be upset. In the ongoing softball thread one of ours who was at the game had an insightful post about what happened after the 6th inning during the commercial break. I actually witnessed the beginning of the interaction but then commercial.
In the end could just be frustration boiling over but CTW has always fought for his teams. I remember him getting ejected on a fairly regular basis when I first started following softball.
Good question. Don't hire your best friend, ever. That was his mistake and we will see if can fire him. His legacy depends on this.
I’m no fan of present hitting coach but let’s not forget a very successful present head coach at OSU (number 2 in nation) is a great buddy of CTW and used to be on the Gators staff. Sometimes things work sometimes they don’t. I miss Kenny G and Jen Rocha.
CTW definitely has some decisions to make in the offseason. Firing a friend is never easy but once you do it the first time it’s not so bad. Marinate on it for a week. It was the right decision and before you know it you’ll be having pool parties again, all forgiven.
There was a fair amount of criticism of the Kenny G hire, as I recall he was in charge of turf maintenance when hired. People were losing their minds about Walton hiring his best buddy
Kenny G proved the naysayers wrong I’d think. I was so sad to see him leave but he’s doing a hell of a job at OSU.
Kenny G team batting averages his 3 years....278,313,303 Aric Thomas batting averages his 3+ years.....317,277,314, (339 this season to date) Ironically almost identical in sum
People complained about the passive hitting approach his entire time here, it wasn't that noisy because of team success, especially late season
Not to highjack the thread, but pregame our team collectively turned its back to the scoreboard when the SC "hype" video was played. I actually like that. I'm always surprised when opposing teams are glued to our hype video at KSP.
We tended to play a much more difficult pre conference schedule back in those days. The numbers this season and last are deceiving imo. Put up 15-20 runs against the Illinois Sts of the world but the numbers plummet against even modest pitching much less an elite pitcher/staff.
Orange and blue nailed it. Look at the SEC batting averages, not the composite average. Poor Sarah L bat's. 350 against non SEC this year. 3 series in against real pitching and defense she is under .200 combined Last year we had 4 starters under .200 against SEC pitching and one of them batted a cool .088.
I thought about that....I think you will find the schedules are not all that dissimilar. I was actually surprised when I looked at how close they looked on the surface (admittedly I don't remember the exact strength of some teams from 10 years ago). Probably a tad lighter now in pre conference, but I also think the conference now is much deeper from top to bottom. IMO it's pretty close to a wash.
That disparity is true pretty much every year, including the Kenny G seasons. His second year had a massive gap between SEC and non conference play
The SEC was deep even in those days but I do agree it’s gotten even stronger since which is good for the conference as a whole. Honestly north, south, east and west across the whole country the level of softball has skyrocketed which is wonderful for the sport! It’s been amazing to watch how rapidly the sport has grown in popularity. I just wish all that growth and success would translate to growth in the professional league. There’s way too many talented players we never see again after graduation because the pro league is so small and the National team only has so many spots.