I don't see using Jucos as being the problem. Under Childress alone: Hicks, Duran, Jackson, Reynolds, J. Stinson, Newmann, Brian Ruggiano, Darby Brown, Dane Carter, Campfield, Patterson, Stilson, Alcazar, Hinojosa, Juengel all JUCOs. Just looking at Rice's roster, I see 5 juco guys, 4 who played against us last night. Their best offensive product is also from a juco. I see 7 on LSU's roster.
Sophomores and freshman are hitting. Moroney, Taylor, Birk, Banks have become the core of this team. Minter, Vinson, Schlottmann, Stubblefield, and Long are all underclassmen and the real meat of the pitching staff.
Rest of the team hasn't "declined to a man". Lankford is having another good season, Allemand has really turned it around. Nau and Statum haven't declined. Bratsen better after being sick.
Early struggle is no one was hitting. Latest struggle is we don't know our rotation for the first 2 days of the weekend. The real decline has come in upperclassmen pitching...Ray, Mengden, Jester. That was supposed to be your Friday and Saturday plus closer. The SEC has 17 starters with ERAs lower than Long's. Ole Miss and Arkansas each have 2 guys with ERAs below 2.40 that we'll be seeing to close out the year, and LSU has Nola at 0.88. If you don't have an ace figured out to stack up against some teams to start the weekends, you're in trouble.
And I disagree that you hire someone else just to hire someone else. Like with Mark Turgeon, you can actually do worse than Childress. However, unlike basketball, A&M doesn't need the stars to align to have an alluring job posting for a baseball coach. We have the intangibles to hire someone who has proven postseason success, so I'm not sure why we wouldn't.
[This message has been edited by Lance Uppercut (edited 4/24/2014 1:15a).]