Series recap:
May 6: Liberty 6, Coastal 14
May 7: Liberty 3, Coastal 12
May 8: Liberty 3, Coastal 17
The curtain closes on the Liberty – Coastal Big South baseball rivalry in crushing fashion for the Flames. The nationally ranked and conference leading Chanticleers scored in double digits in each game of the three game series. Coastal (34-14, 16-2 BSC), who has a legitimate shot at hosting a regional in the NCAA tournament, outscored Liberty 43-12.
With the sweep Liberty has now only won 5 of its last 17 games and is 0-4 in May. Liberty had only one starting pitcher make it out of the second inning all weekend. Andrew Yacyk and Will Shepherd both had 3 hit games in the series to highlight an offense that was mostly held in check by the Coastal pitching staff.
A Season of Shortcomings:
All season we have seen this team struggle to put together 9 solid innings of baseball. When the pitching staff has found its groove, they received no run support from the offense. When the offense got hot, the pitching staff and defense let games get away. Good teams figure out how to win games and the Flames are just not a good team right now.
Coach Toman has used the injury excuse recently for his team’s poor play. And while Liberty has seen the likes of weekend starter Victor Cole and first baseman Sammy Taormina go down most recently with forearm tightness and a hand/wrist sprain respectively, this excuse falls deaf on my ears. This late in the year every team has had its fair share of injuries and obstacles to overcome. This team has too much talent to be sitting 4 games under .500 both on the year and in Big South play. This is not acceptable for a program with yearly NCAA Tournament aspirations and for a program who has the money and infrastructure to back those aspirations up.
With this being the last Big South series against Coastal, who is moving to the Sunbelt Conference in all sports in 2017, it was easy to see that the Flames have some catching up to do if they want to be the consistent top 25 program Coastal has become. Liberty seemed to be heading down a path to become that kind of powerhouse program until taking a step backwards both during the 2015 and 2016 seasons. With the Flames in danger of finishing the year below .500 for this first time in well over a decade, leadership may be forced to consider making some tough decisions come seasons’ end.
Conference Tournament Update:
Both Radford and UNCA who sit 8th and 9th behind the Flames in the conference standings were swept this weekend leaving the Flames a 2 game cushion to make the conference tournament. Campbell is not eligible for this years tournament due to APR issues so the Flames only need to finish in the top 9. With the Flames falling 4 games below .500 with two conference series left, it seems that just making the conference tournament would be considered a success.
Up Next For The Flames:
The Flames have four home games this week to attempt to get the ship pointed back in the right direction. Old Dominion (29-18, 12-12 CUSA) visits Lynchburg Wednesday for a 3pm contest. Liberty lost a heart-breaker back in March in its previous match up with the Monarchs when ODU’s Connor Meyers hit a walk off solo homer in the bottom of the 9th.
Big South and in state rival Radford (14-33, 6-12 BSC) visits for three games over weekend. Radford, which is located only 95 miles away form Lynchburg, VA, always plays Liberty tough no matter where the teams sit in the standings. A series win would put the Flames up at least three games over Radford for 7th place with a 3 game series left against 2nd place High Point to finish out the season.
I’ve said for sometime that the problem goes beyond baseball. The entire athletic administration under Jeff Barber is lacking. Baseball, basketball, and football
have only one one BCS championship in the eleven years he has been in charge. For some reason he can only get retreads as head coaches. The basketball and football coaches were fired from their previous head coaching jobs and the baseball coach had never been a head coach. With all the resources, we should be dominating the Big South but it will never happen under Jeff Barber.
but it w
Dave,
Did you mean to say that the basketball, football, and baseball teams have only won one Big South Championship combined? Football alone has had at least 5 or 6 championships under Jeff Barber’s reign as AD. Our football coach was let go by Kansas before coming to Liberty that is true, but Ritchie McKay left his position at UVA to reclaim the LU basketball head coaching spot. Toman wasn’t fired at South Carolina either.