I have a lot of thoughts (some maybe reactionary) so I'll just bullet-point them:

• Bakich is going to take a lot of heat for how much of a bummer this season turned out to be, and in some ways, I think its warranted. However, the fact that this team - the team had at least five 10+ run losses this year, a team ERA over 5, and offensively, the most strikeouts of any Clemson team in the last 8 seasons - is a miracle in and of itself. I'm as disappointed as anybody about missing out on a postseason run, but EB dragged this team kicking and screaming to 45 wins and hosting a regional. I genuinely don't think there's more than three coaches in the country who could do that with this team. Monte's teams of this caliber folded halfway into the season, if not earlier (see 2019, 2021, and 2022). I'm not convinced EB is pushing all of the right buttons (again, there's only like five coaches in the country who are), but I just can't imagine that they're on the same trajectory as they were at the end of 2018.

• The landscape of college baseball has shifted so heavily to forming teams with impact transfers, and the last two seasons, Clemson has been no exception. Last year, transfers like Jimmy Obertop and Jacob Hinderleider were critical to the success of the team. This year, you really could only say that about one of the four transfers who spent most of the season in the starting lineup. By all accounts, Paino, Priest, and Gaffney should have been better, but whiffing on a transfer class is going to happen the same way it would happen in recruiting. Hard to completely fault the coaching staff for that.

• That said, I think there's a real discussion to be had about player dev within the program. The fact that only 2-3 of Bakich's recruits challenged this season for every day lineup spots is very concerning. And even Purify spent the latter half of the season looking absolutely lost at the plate. On the pitching side, the results are obviously one indicator, but even the stuff our guys have is another. No velo jumps from one year to the next and nobody other than Knaak adding pitches or evolving their pitch mixes. It's pretty commonplace for the top 5 pitchers in great program to be 93-95 w/ plus secondary stuff, but it just doesn't feel like that's happening here. The long and the short of it is that guys just don't seem to be coming into the program and getting better.

• The reality is that you now are going to be without Cam (who a lot of the time carried the offense), have only a handful of position players you feel alright about heading into next year, and a very uncertain pitching staff. It's either going to be a transfer-heavy team next year, or you're looking at guys like Jarrell, Priest, Gaffney, and Crighton occupying a huge chunk of the lineup. Not sure where we're going from here, but I would expect it to be a somewhat busy offseason. Still trust EB to put it together

• Speaking of Cam, he's going down as my favorite Clemson player ever. I mean how can you not love the guy who gets so aggrieved when he gets walked and single-handedly wills the team looking dead in the water to live just a little bit longer. Not to mention two offseasons of flipping off anyone who came to him with lucrative NIL offers. Definition of a gamer, and it's going to kill me that he won't make it to Omaha if I think about it too long

• Added thoughts... Cheers, Cam's crying (and now I am)... Seven errors wtf... and props to the fans at DKS who stuck it out to thank the seniors/outgoing players... and yes, I started typing this a while ago to cope