a traditional powerhouse in the ASC Conference(Miss College's conference). They got as high as #3 in d3 this his first season, at one point like 28-0, but faded at the end of the year. Still won the regular season conference title, but had a few key injuries and losses toward the end that really hurt them in the regionals and their conference tourney.
I'll go in great detail in a new thread at a later time on the nature of State's recruiting, in regards to Hillcrest...
Basically, they never much looked at Seth, due to his football scholarship at OM. Didn't look at Dustin Cliburn either when he signed with OM out of MCC(was a HC grad)Polk "wanted" Stephen. Asked him to come on an official visit during football season(Oct) of our SENIOR year. This is WAY past when he would have to sign elsewhere, and had Stephen waited, all his other offers would have gone away, and that didn't even guarantee Polk would offer him. It pissed him off at the time. Stephen grew up a State and LSU fan. OM wasn't even on his radar until Bianco/McDonell arrived on campus. Stephen had opened everyone's eyes in the East Coast Showcase after his junior year. In that one weekend, he went from a few occasional calls, to absolute recruiting/scouting insanity. OM and South Carolina were in the "lead" with him, mainly because he loved Dan McDonell and Ray Tanner. Really, really loved Tanner. Raffo was basically an absentee to all the events of this. During that time, he and Brian Pettway became really good friends(Pettway was considered the best hitter in the state out of hs in several years). They decided they wanted to play together, as they were getting all of the same offers. Ultimately, Pettway decided he wanted to stay in MS and go to OM and Stephen went with him. State never really went after either of them. The way Polk handled it left a chip on Stephen's shoulder to say the least. Once Stephen went and had his freshman success, following Seth's freshman success, the pipeline was established, and that was that. Cody and Logan never even much gave State a chance, which tells you just how badly State quit recruiting(Logan would've been a legacy player at State). The only player out of the HC pipeline that ended up actually signing with and going to State was Daniel Tackett, which was 100% because Shoenrock saw him play in the Juco showcase, and they signed him directly out of that...
The whole time, State oozed the "we're so good, they should just come to us" mentality, while OM, particularly Dan, was coming after us hard. Dan was at over HALF of our highschool games. 180 miles one way. NEVER, EVER saw Polk or Raffo. At least that's what it looked like from our perspective. It was my lifelong goal to play at State, and by the end of my senior year, I was good enough. My problem was basically that I developed far too late for recruiting, as I didn't begin catching until between soph and junior seasons, while not being a starter at HC until my senior year. Still managed to clean up on the all mpsa, all-metro, district, allstar teams, etc...and still wasn't fully comfortable behind the plate. Anyway, I was offered an "invited walk-on" by Polk, but didn't take it, and went the juco route...only to get lost in the amazing lack of exposure and coaching in those ranks(another topic as well). The reason I didn't accept was because Polk had become well-known for getting good players that were "life-long bulldogs" with other decent offers onto campus, under the guise of "invited walk on" where he tells you "you've got a spot on the team, we just don't have any more scholarships available(insert 5 min NCAA/titleIX rant), but if you perform well, you can go on scholarship next semester" only to turn around and cut these guys, leaving them with nothing, when they could've been playing/starting elsewhere. After the 2nd or 3rd guy we heard about this happening to, it wasn't worth the risk. I had the same chance at OM. Had I known then what I know now(this was 2002, and they were still a bottom SEC program, with a small stadium and no fans), I would've been a Rebel as well. No doubt about it....
And that's the shortest version of what happened to State's program that I can make. This should connect the dots on how the recruiting failure on Stephen, and a bunch of other players like him, played a major role in kickstarting OM's program...and burying ours for a decade(sans one lightning in a bottle moment in 2007). We're still not "back" and won't be until Dudy Noble has 4-5k people at the midweek games, but this season was an excellent start.
