Richmond Baseball 2020

[CH_Spider]

Our Friday opponent (Georgetown) also sits at 2-6.

vs Navy - W 16-6
vs Navy - L 2-6
vs Navy - L 3-6
@ GW - L2-3
@ Davidson - L 0-5
@ Davidson - L 4-5
@ Davidson - L 2-10
@ UMES - W 7-4

Very winnable

 

[Eight Legger]

Very surprising to see our struggles after the opening series at Georgia. Let's hope we get it turned around soon.

 

[SpiderFan]

Are there any key injuries contributing to this?

 

[72Spider]

Can't hold a lead late and lose to Georgetown in 10 innings, 11-8. Continued very poor pitching.

 

[AnnapSpider]

We seem to be recruiting some good kids, why are we so bad?

 

[CarolinaSpider]

We seem to be recruiting some good kids, why are we so bad?

Pitching especially relief pitching has been an issue last two years. Maybe sign of depth issues in pitching,
is that we use a lot of them in most games.

 

[invinoveritasinaquasanitas]

Today we drop yet another game to a team (Wagner) with a losing record (3/5).
Wagner - 9 UR - 6
Four errors by UR.
Georgetown was 2/6 coming into their game with us.
Coppin State was 0/4. Take away Georgia, the record of the last 3 teams that beat us was 5/15.
Who do I contact about a Billboard?

 

[32counter]

Today we drop yet another game to a team (Wagner) with a losing record (3/5).
Wagner - 9 UR - 6
Four errors by UR.
Georgetown was 2/6 coming into their game with us.
Coppin State was 0/4. Take away Georgia, the record of the last 3 teams that beat us was 5/15.
Who do I contact about a Billboard?

Wagner is ranked #1 in the Staten Island only University Baseball poll.Gotta give us some slack for keeping it close.

 

[72Spider]

From watching the Georgia series and some games last year, the pitchers get themselves behind on the count and either give too fat a pitch to hit or they get too cute and end up walking the batter. Can't pitch when you are defensive. Have to go at em.

 

[I-M-UR]

Talk about a coach that needs to move on

 

[32counter]

Did West Virginia pay us to come here to beat us to a pulp?That would make perfect sense.

 

[Eight Legger]

I thought Woodson might have salvaged his job last year, but this is going to make it very difficult to retain him after the season.

 

[SpiderFan]

I agree, I really like the scheduling he has brought to Richmond the last few years, but already at 10 losses for the year, going to be tough to retain him with that type of production or lack thereof.

 

[urfan1]

tough to get walk on's at $60K+ per year. Are we giving him the tools he needs to succeed?

 

[Wood Hall]

tough to get walk on's at $60K+ per year. Are we giving him the tools he needs to succeed?

Very, very few full-time UR students, much less a recruited walkon in any sport, is going to pay full price on tuition.

 

[SFspidur]

Very, very few full-time UR students, much less a recruited walkon in any sport, is going to pay full price on tuition.

Only 39% of undergrads qualify for need-based aid, so if you're not on an athletic or academic scholarship, there's a pretty decent chance you are indeed paying full-freight.

Overall, 68% of undergrads receive aid of some kind.

https://admission.richmond.edu/studentprofile/index.html

 

[invinoveritasinaquasanitas]

Only 39% of undergrads qualify for need-based aid, so if you're not on an athletic or academic scholarship, there's a pretty decent chance you are indeed paying full-freight.

Overall, 68% of undergrads receive aid of some kind.

https://admission.richmond.edu/studentprofile/index.html

Since about 70% of students received an average of $40,400.00 in financial aid, doesn't that make us competitive with state schools whose cost average a little over $22,000.00?
2017-18 FULL-TIME RESIDENT UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT CHARGES

Just asking because I've heard often that the average net cost of a UR education compares very favorably to the cost at state schools.

 

[SFspidur]

If you qualify for a good amount of aid, sure, we can be very competitive. The problem is for those families making a bit more who don't get that $40K, if anything. If you get up into the six-figure income with some assets under your belt, UR aid starts dropping to where it doesn't come down to match full-price state school.

 

[SpiderTrap]

In terms of the aid - let me give some insight as I have spoken to a few people on the "inside" of both the administration and athletics side of the house at UR on this topic. UR is indeed "need-blind" in terms of giving accepted students money so they only pay what they can afford. With that being said - it is extremely naive to think that for the REGULAR student, the finance don't play a part in the admission process. As noted above, and in any given year roughly 25-30% pay full price and the school needs kids to pay full price in order to help pay for the other kids who can't afford full price. I wouldn't go as far as their is a quota they need to hit in terms of full time paying students, but they keep it relatively close to the same number.
With that being said - sports who do not receive a full allotment of scholarships to fill out a team, like baseball, can try to use this to their advantage - but they have to be very strategic about it AND they have to get buy in from the administration to do it, in terms of getting kids accepted. Prime example - I know for a fact former football coach Dave Clawson used to use the "need-blind" giving mantra to his advantage when recruiting kids. If he saw a kid he liked and wanted to recruit - he may have the kid fill out all the paperwork to see how much the school would give in aide and then supplement that either with a partial scholarship or potential the kids family could afford the significantly discounted tuition. Therefore saving a scholarship or part of one to use on another kid. BUT the key is here - you have to get buy in from the admissions to admit some of these kids who likely would not make it on their own merit without athletics, and then beyond that - ask them to give them financial aid. Maybe the school is willing to do that for football, but maybe not baseball?
Baseball is allowed to offer 11.7 scholarships among 27 players. So not sure if coach is getting the support he needs from the administration - but there is ways around this. But I can also see it being a tough sell to some kids. You might be telling them they can come to UR and pay only $5K or $10K a year, which is relatively cheap - whereas they might be getting offered a full ride or close to it somewhere else with little to no tuition bill at the end of the day.

 

[invinoveritasinaquasanitas]

In terms of the aid - let me give some insight as I have spoken to a few people on the "inside" of both the administration and athletics side of the house at UR on this topic. UR is indeed "need-blind" in terms of giving accepted students money so they only pay what they can afford. With that being said - it is extremely naive to think that for the REGULAR student, the finance don't play a part in the admission process. As noted above, and in any given year roughly 25-30% pay full price and the school needs kids to pay full price in order to help pay for the other kids who can't afford full price. I wouldn't go as far as their is a quota they need to hit in terms of full time paying students, but they keep it relatively close to the same number.
With that being said - sports who do not receive a full allotment of scholarships to fill out a team, like baseball, can try to use this to their advantage - but they have to be very strategic about it AND they have to get buy in from the administration to do it, in terms of getting kids accepted. Prime example - I know for a fact former football coach Dave Clawson used to use the "need-blind" giving mantra to his advantage when recruiting kids. If he saw a kid he liked and wanted to recruit - he may have the kid fill out all the paperwork to see how much the school would give in aide and then supplement that either with a partial scholarship or potential the kids family could afford the significantly discounted tuition. Therefore saving a scholarship or part of one to use on another kid. BUT the key is here - you have to get buy in from the admissions to admit some of these kids who likely would not make it on their own merit without athletics, and then beyond that - ask them to give them financial aid. Maybe the school is willing to do that for football, but maybe not baseball?
Baseball is allowed to offer 11.7 scholarships among 27 players. So not sure if coach is getting the support he needs from the administration - but there is ways around this. But I can also see it being a tough sell to some kids. You might be telling them they can come to UR and pay only $5K or $10K a year, which is relatively cheap - whereas they might be getting offered a full ride or close to it somewhere else with little to no tuition bill at the end of the day.

Thanks for that information. It helps explain the situation.

 

[SFspidur]

In terms of the aid - let me give some insight as I have spoken to a few people on the "inside" of both the administration and athletics side of the house at UR on this topic. UR is indeed "need-blind" in terms of giving accepted students money so they only pay what they can afford. With that being said - it is extremely naive to think that for the REGULAR student, the finance don't play a part in the admission process. As noted above, and in any given year roughly 25-30% pay full price and the school needs kids to pay full price in order to help pay for the other kids who can't afford full price. I wouldn't go as far as their is a quota they need to hit in terms of full time paying students, but they keep it relatively close to the same number.

What you're describing is not need-blind then, and would be a massive lie by the university, so I don't believe it's the case. My understanding is that admissions never sees the financial side of the student's application during the regular portion of admission decisions.

There are some areas where UR can massage things to get to their targeted range of students paying full-freight. International and transfer admissions are definitely need-aware. The freshman waitlist is also need-aware, but that happens after the initial need-blind review and admissions decision.

Richmond promises to meet 100% of demonstrated need for every admitted student—and we don't consider financial need when making admission decisions for U.S. citizens and permanent residents who enter as first year students.

https://financialaid.richmond.edu/prospective/index.html

 

[Wood Hall]

Baseball is allowed to offer 11.7 scholarships among 27 players. So not sure if coach is getting the support he needs from the administration - but there is ways around this. But I can also see it being a tough sell to some kids. You might be telling them they can come to UR and pay only $5K or $10K a year, which is relatively cheap - whereas they might be getting offered a full ride or close to it somewhere else with little to no tuition bill at the end of the day.

Very few baseball players anywhere receive a full scholarship. Even giving only two full rides would leave only 9.7 to be divided among the other 25 players on scholarship.

I know the Oregon State coach quite well. They've won three NCAA titles in this century, more than any other program. Even his very best players maxed out at 2/3 or 1/2 of a scholarship, and generally that much was given to only two or three players a year, guys like Matt Boyd, Michael Conforto, Nick Madrigal or Adley Rutschman.

The key, at an expensive private school like UR, is to augment available athletic financial aid with the regular financial aid UR offers to many of its undergraduate students. And (of course) being able to award 11.7 scholarships; I'm not sure if we are at that point.

Or you could cheat, like Vanderbilt.

 

[iSpider]

I don’t know whether it’s a lack of talent or bad coaching, but I think that we could probably do as well as we’re doing so far this year with no scholarships, no financial aid, playing members of the Quidditch team.
We’re 3/11 on the season and today after 6 innings we’re down 10-1 to Yale (2/6).

 

[32counter]

Should we enclose Pitt Field and convert it to a multipurpose indoor practice facility?

 

[SpiderTrap]

What you're describing is not need-blind then, and would be a massive lie by the university, so I don't believe it's the case. My understanding is that admissions never sees the financial side of the student's application during the regular portion of admission decisions.

There are some areas where UR can massage things to get to their targeted range of students paying full-freight. International and transfer admissions are definitely need-aware. The freshman waitlist is also need-aware, but that happens after the initial need-blind review and admissions decision.



https://financialaid.richmond.edu/prospective/index.html

Its a lie. And its not only UR, it happens at a lot of places. Think of it this way - do you think UR could afford to supplement the tuition of every single student - all 3,000 undergrads? Maybe - but that endowment would take a major hit. UR's endowment, which helps fund the "need-blind" admissions is around $2.5 billion I believe. Very good endowment. Until you realize you can't use most of it as most of it is invested and private schools like UR use the endowment to measure themselves against other schools. So that last thing you want to do is take a chunk of money away from it to fund some project or initiative. For comparison - Ivy league schools have endowments in the 25+ billion range - so they might be able to afford true need blind admissions.
But the reality is - UR needs full paying students. And your silly to think if they have two students of equal merit and need to make a decision between the two that the kid with who can pay full price doesn't get the edge. If you don't believe that - just take a walk around the campus and look at all the cars - its like a Mercedes, Lexus, Range Rover car lot at times. And I have a hard time believing that UR is just "lucky" in that all the smart rich kids happen to apply to UR.
And to be clear - I don't have a problem with this. If UR needs 25-30% to pay full price to help the majority 70-75% get reduced tuition, I am all for it.
But for topic of this discussion - it is something that can be used by sports, but I would believe you need a major buy in from the school to do so and I can't speak to whether baseball has that buy in? I know football did when Clawson was here - but then again, he left UR for another job and then so did Rocco - so I wonder if this type of support had any factor in those moves. I can't say.

 

[SpiderTrap]

Baseball is allowed to offer 11.7 scholarships among 27 players. So not sure if coach is getting the support he needs from the administration - but there is ways around this. But I can also see it being a tough sell to some kids. You might be telling them they can come to UR and pay only $5K or $10K a year, which is relatively cheap - whereas they might be getting offered a full ride or close to it somewhere else with little to no tuition bill at the end of the day.

Very few baseball players anywhere receive a full scholarship. Even giving only two full rides would leave only 9.7 to be divided among the other 25 players on scholarship.

I know the Oregon State coach quite well. They've won three NCAA titles in this century, more than any other program. Even his very best players maxed out at 2/3 or 1/2 of a scholarship, and generally that much was given to only two or three players a year, guys like Matt Boyd, Michael Conforto, Nick Madrigal or Adley Rutschman.

The key, at an expensive private school like UR, is to augment available athletic financial aid with the regular financial aid UR offers to many of its undergraduate students. And (of course) being able to award 11.7 scholarships; I'm not sure if we are at that point.

Or you could cheat, like Vanderbilt.

You hit the nail on the head better than I did. You are correct - in baseball, it is very rare a baseball player would get a full ride and use up a whole scholarship. You might see this once and a while with rare talents, but those kids usually get drafted out of high school anyways. The other difficulty with that as well is in baseball - they have to stay 3 years. If kids could leave after 1 year - you might see more of it, but to lock up one of your scholarships for 3 years is an expensive and risky task.
The key you said is to augment regular aid with athletic aid. But like I mentioned earlier - that takes buy in from the school and if I had to take a guess based on recent decisions and actions (Rocco leaving and citing lack of support, and removal of Track and Soccer because they didn't want athletes bringing down the regular student population) the school probably doesn't fully support this.
My question would be - with the 11.7 scholarships and UR has a baseball roster of 35 kids - how many of those 35 do you think "got help" with admissions because of baseball. Meaning - how many spots do you think Coach is allowed to go to admissions to get a kid into school before the school says - no more, kid must get admitted on their own. All 35? 20? I am thinking it is less than the full roster and if that is the case - I can only imagine how tough it is to find kids who are not only D1 level college baseball players, but can also get around a 1400 on their SAT and THEN - financially maybe afford to pay the hefty tuition bill. Talk about handcuffs.

 

[Wood Hall]

I can only imagine how tough it is to find kids who are not only D1 level college baseball players, but can also get around a 1400 on their SAT and THEN - financially maybe afford to pay the hefty tuition bill. Talk about handcuffs.

Perhaps. But Rice, Stanford and Vandy, which are national players, and Yale, which has a very good program, manage to do it.

Holy Cross played in the NCAAs three years ago and Gonzaga has an outstanding program. Those schools are not cheap, nor do they recruit dummies.

And we seem to be doing OK in lacrosse, which recruits from essentially the same economic/racial demographic as baseball. Players are there. We just have to show them we have the coaching and program commitment so they can see themselves succeeding here.

 

[SFspidur]

I don't believe we offer the full 11.7, but not sure about that.

Any word on the status of the Pitt Field upgrades?

 

[SpiderTrap]

I can only imagine how tough it is to find kids who are not only D1 level college baseball players, but can also get around a 1400 on their SAT and THEN - financially maybe afford to pay the hefty tuition bill. Talk about handcuffs.

Perhaps. But Rice, Stanford and Vandy, which are national players, and Yale, which has a very good program, manage to do it.

Holy Cross played in the NCAAs three years ago and Gonzaga has an outstanding program. Those schools are not cheap, nor do they recruit dummies.

And we seem to be doing OK in lacrosse, which recruits from essentially the same economic/racial demographic as baseball. Players are there. We just have to show them we have the coaching and program commitment so they can see themselves succeeding here.

Agreed - but I am not saying recruit dummies and not sure what "admission" support those other schools get. Example - how many admission slots do you think Baseball gets on the full roster. How many times can they go to admissions and say - admit this kid, he has 1100 SAT score, and can afford pay 3/4 tuition, we will pick up the rest with baseball scholarship? Does he get to full out the full roster with that or does he have to find 10 kids who will get into the school on their own and can play baseball - I don't know. If he is getting support - then yes, its bad recruiting and inability to find these kids and convince them to come to UR. But I am willing to guess that support from admissions is minimal based on previous athletic decisions made by UR.
And yes - Lacrosse had done well, but lets not over blow their success or lack thereof in my mind. I believe there are only about 75-80 D1 lacrosse programs in existence. So being in the top 25 means carries less weight. Also - I think there is a bigger drop off after you get outside the top 10-15 teams in the country. So while they have had success in their own conference - once outside of that and in the NCAA tourney - we run into the bigger name programs and lose - like many teams in our position who fall outside that top tier of teams.
Not sure what the issue is here with baseball - but would love to see them bounce back to a top level team in the A10 - that run in the early 2000's to college world series regionals and super regionals was electric.