There is always risk with change. We don't know how this season would have turned out with Jamie at the helm. What if this season had gone as scheduled and we had not won either the B1G or B1G tourney and been eliminated on the road in the regional? Success? Failure? The sky is not falling. You are the "just compete in the B1G" expectation guy. Fiser is IMO the most important player for next year but if she does not come back she doesn't. Players get hurt, players transfer, and they have to do what is right for them. This is Amber's last year. She can pay out of state tuition at MN or find the absolute best team that will take her and give her money.
All sports are entertainment. I started paying any real attention, watching games on the BTN and tracking their performance on Gophersports.com at the start of the BIG tourney in 2014. By that 2014 Minneapolis regional against Auburn, I was hooked. What fun! Having a punchers chance for the BIG TEN tourney and playing the following week is highly enjoyable entertainment; the whole season is but those two weeks are such a climax. For me that is the realistic goal.
I feel silly doing this because nobody knows how 2020 would have turned out. One thing we do have evidence for, Jamie had her Minnesota team, and Fiser in particular, peaking at the end of the season her previous seasons. I think it is reasonable to say we would have had a 33 percent to 50 percent chance to win the BIG ten tourney. Our odds probably would have been as good as Michigan’s and a little better than Northwestern’s and it is tough for me to think of an outsider to those three teams breaking through that three team gauntlet to win it.
And from there the Gophers would be hoping for a 13-16 seed in the NCAA. Maybe they get it, maybe they go on the road to face one of those teams with a punchers chance to survive. That’s fun to me. That’s entertainment, which is what sports is.
Maybe I am a bad fan, but it will be tougher for me to be as fanatical about this team if we are a middle of the pack team just hoping to be one of those 4-5 Big Ten teams hoping to be cannon fodder in the NCAA regional... at best.
If Fiser goes, she goes. Again, I viewed her 2021 season as the bridge to our pitching future not because our other pitchers on staff are bad, I don’t think they are. But what Fiser has was unusual power and stamina to maintain velocity and performance inning after inning, month after month. I just don’t know if our other 2021 pitchers can keep up good performance with that many innings. We needed to get to 2022 when more recruited pitchers were on the way to grow our staff. But my bigger worry is it has only been a week! What if more players go... especially... you know who.