2011 Missouri Tigers baseball. Bounce back year?

Last season was a rough year for the Missouri Tigers baseball team.  After qualifying for post season play after the 2003-2009 seasons the Tigers fell to 29-26 last season, failing to reach the NCAA tournament.  Manager Tim Jamieson hasn't been the most popular coach in CoMO despite a record of 480-329-2 and 8 trips to post season play during his tenure that began in 1995.  Expectations are low for the Tigers this year as they've been picked to finish 8th in the conference.  (Iowa State and Colorado don't field teams) The Tigers return 6 starters from last years squad, which was poor by Missouri standards.  The pitching figures to be decent, but offense was a real problem for the Tigers last year and the only returner that hit over .300 last year is Ryan Gebhart who only played in 20 games last year.

Despite what Missouri fans think of Jamieson, he's obviously well thought of as he's been selected to manage Team USA this spring, but has suffered by the recent success of softball manager Ehren Earleywine, especially the last 2 seasons.  The Tigers haven't won a conference crown since the 1980 season, and considering the success they had from 1952 to 1965 when they won 7 conference titles and made 6 trips to the college world series, finishing 2nd three times and winning it all in 1954.  An interesting member of that team was former basketball coach Norm Stewart, who was a pitcher on the team.  Norm was a true 2 sport athlete at Mizzou, good enough to be drafted by the St Louis Hawks of the NBA and the Baltimore Orioles in major league baseball.  If Jamieson could achieve half the popularity "Stormin' Norman" did, he'd probably retire from Missouri whenever he wanted to.

I have no idea how the baseball team will do this season.  My heart tells me someone will come through and they'll be competitive again this season.  Taylor stadium is a great place to watch a game and I usually try to hit a couple of games, one which traditionally falls on the same day as the spring game of the football Tigers.  More than likely however, it's going to be another disappointing season for the Black & Gold and TJ will be facing a lot of heat.  Now that Cindy Stein is no longer patrolling the sidelines for the women's basketball team, he's a very likely target.  Hopefully, and I doubt this is likely, he could talk former Tiger Phil Bradley into working with the baseball team as he has with softball the last couple of years.  If you're looking to follow Tigers baseball a little closer, may I recommend you visit SimmonsField.com for a complete look at your Tiger team.  It's an excellent read.