The only glimmer of hope I have this year

....is the fact that Aoki recently did that ass-covering interview with the Indy paper. Normally, neither he nor Swarbrick feel compelled to say anything about the state of the baseball program.

For whatever reason, Aoki felt he needed to make those self-serving comments noting all his various challenges at ND. It makes me wonder if he feels less secure in his position (god help me for even needing to ponder that after 9 years of this) this time around.

He offered a litany of excuses from injuries to weather to money to inexperience. He threw it all at the wall hoping something would stick.

I'm probably being naive. Jack most likely doesn't have the guts to replace his own hire. But, it would be interesting to understand how that article came to be, as it (or one like it) has never appeared in previous years. Did Aoki seek it out?

Few ND coaches in any sport have had 6 losing seasons

The only other ND baseball coach to do so was this board's namesake, Jake Kline, who had 14 losing seasons. But those came in a span of 42 years, and were accompanied by 27 winning seasons and one .500 season. The most losing seasons by any ND basketball coach was 5, shared by John Jordan (in 13 seasons) and John MacLeod (in 8 seasons). No ND football coach has had more than 2 losing seasons (Faust and Davie).

Remember how we thought Dave Schrage's tenure was a nightmare? Schrage had one losing season out of four, and an overall record 15 games above .500. Barring a miracle run that would have to include an ACC championship and at least 2 NCAA tournament wins, this will be Aoki's 6th losing season out of 9. His current overall record is 248-251-1.

The only other ND baseball coaches with career losing records were Tom Kelly and Larry Gallo, who coached 5 and 7 seasons, respectively, from 1976-1987. Back then, ND still played at Jake Kline Field, which was on par with local Little League parks of the time and a step below high school fields (which had lights; Jake Kline Field did not). 1987 also was the first time ND opened its season before a spring break road trip. Pat Murphy's first season, 1988, was the first time ND opened its season in February, and marked the beginning of ND's efforts to have a modern major college baseball program.

Neither Murphy nor Paul Mainieri ever had a losing season at ND during their combined, glorious, 19 season run. ND won 40+ games in 17 of those 19 seasons, including 50 and 51-win seasons. Since 2007, ND's peak has been 37 wins in 2015.

WTF would it take for Swarbrick to pull the plug on Aoki? That was a rhetorical question. It almost certainly will take a new Athletic Director.

Great stuff. The most damning thing to me...

....is that Jack and Aoki want to hide behind the strength of the ACC. Well, that's nice, but how about going 11-11 vs. the out-of-conference tomato cans you scheduled. Outside of ASU, it wasn't exactly Murderer's Row, and yet you needed 2 comebacks to sweep Canisius to even sniff .500 in OOC games.

There are no excuses. There are no reasons. At this point, all that exists is inability to do the job---by both the head coach and AD.

It's shameful. Thanks for the statistics to prove it.

If ever there was a need for a billboard....

"Jack Swarbrick doesn't care about ND baseball"

Full page AD in the Observer. Or a billboard.

But honestly, he'd just hire some other c-list coach who wouldn't get the job done.

I would love to embarrass Savvy Jack though. I in a way, I think a billboard against Swarbrick about a sport OTHER than ND football would hurt him more than one related to football.

As someone said below "Hope is a dangerous thing"

but at some point all the sub .500 ball has to matter.

Now, I don't think Swarbrick will fire Aoki and I don't really want him hiring a coach either. But it would be nice to stop hanging around the bottom of the conference.