[TheTruth!]

Great district game this evening!

[BlackcatAlum]

Tough season for the Blackcats.

They just couldn't manage to be good enough at the plate at the end of the day.

Prestonsburg does have a really talented group of players coming up that'll push for varsity roles next season.

I hate it for the Blackcat seniors, especially Kaden Allen and Brayden Tussey. Those two have logged a lot of innings in a Blackcat uniform. Wish nothing but the best for the seniors!

Congrats to FC!

[TheTruth!]

Tough season for the Blackcats.

They just couldn't manage to be good enough at the plate at the end of the day.

Prestonsburg does have a really talented group of players coming up that'll push for varsity roles next season.

I hate it for the Blackcat seniors, especially Kaden Allen and Brayden Tussey. Those two have logged a lot of innings in a Blackcat uniform. Wish nothing but the best for the seniors!

Congrats to FC!

You’re 100%. Fc will lose a lot this year. Kaden allen will do great thing ahead in college he’s sure a player I loved watching and will keep up with him throughout his career next level.

[Mr. D]

If you had told me that Pburg would go 10-20 this season, score less than 100 runs, and lose in the first round of districts I would have never believed it. Just a really strange year and never really could get things to click like they did last year. This will be a learning experience, and those sophomores will really grow from this. It felt like they turned a corner last year, but this year has to be a disappointment.

[Red and Black]

Disappointing season for the Blackcats, but FC got hot when you want to be hot and Pburg was cold when you don’t want to be cold. That’s baseball. Excellent careers for these SR Blackcats. They’ve got nothing to hang their heads about. Very few Blackcats have played for a regional championship. Lots of young talent on this team and coming up out of the middle school program, so the future should be OK for Pburg baseball.

Great game from FC. I was very impressed with them tonight. Don’t think they beat LC tonight, but who knows? It’s baseball!

[Blackcat 4 Life]

Disappointing season to say the least! Floyd Central improved all year, while we gradually got worse. Floyd Central's body language was positive throughout the game, and their kids seemed to be confident in their ability, while our boys lacked confidence and were unsure of themselves. I have heard rumblings that some are wanting Tucker out, but I don't know if it will happen. Hopefully, like Mr. D. said they can learn something from this year and move forward next year. Hail Blackcats!

[BCF4L]

Obviously, disappointed in the outcome. Just never could get offense and defense synchronized in the same game. When pitching was strong, the bats weren’t and when the bats came to life, the pitching didn’t. Scoring runs was a struggle all year and when we’d get down 2-3 runs, it felt more like 8-9. Sometimes you have those seasons and that was the case this year.

For anyone calling for Tucker’s job, stop. There was nothing else he could’ve done to make this team better. When you don’t have a lot of kids interested in playing, you don’t have the arms to throw live bullpens in practice. You see a lot of pitching machine practice reps offensively but that doesn’t equate to seeing the ball leaving an arm. Again, not the coaches fault. On the flip side, when you only have 3-4 pitchers total, you can’t get extra rest or days to throw bullpens. The only practice they can get is each and every game. Again, nothing Tucker can do there. At the end of the day, he’s playing the hand he was dealt. I remember having this group in little league all-stars and for the most part, the results were similar. It just happens from year to year. People just need to leave Bryce alone and let him coach but it’s Floyd county. We all know how many people get involved.

I hate it for the seniors. Brayden Tussey has been through so much. Shoulder surgery last year and playing with a torn ACL the last half of this year. Many people didn’t know that. All they saw was a knee brace. Kaden has had elbow issues for the last 3 years. He missed most of his sophomore season due to it and the pain just kept appearing at random times. Unfortunately for him, it decided to return the last 3 weeks of the year. You can’t prepare for it.

Congratulations to Floyd Central. They have some great kids. Grew to know a lot of them over the years. They improved so much throughout the year and certainly showed up to play. Wish them nothing but the best against Lawrence and beyond.

[Red and Black]

Obviously, disappointed in the outcome. Just never could get offense and defense synchronized in the same game. When pitching was strong, the bats weren’t and when the bats came to life, the pitching didn’t. Scoring runs was a struggle all year and when we’d get down 2-3 runs, it felt more like 8-9. Sometimes you have those seasons and that was the case this year.

For anyone calling for Tucker’s job, stop. There was nothing else he could’ve done to make this team better. When you don’t have a lot of kids interested in playing, you don’t have the arms to throw live bullpens in practice. You see a lot of pitching machine practice reps offensively but that doesn’t equate to seeing the ball leaving an arm. Again, not the coaches fault. On the flip side, when you only have 3-4 pitchers total, you can’t get extra rest or days to throw bullpens. The only practice they can get is each and every game. Again, nothing Tucker can do there. At the end of the day, he’s playing the hand he was dealt. I remember having this group in little league all-stars and for the most part, the results were similar. It just happens from year to year. People just need to leave Bryce alone and let him coach but it’s Floyd county. We all know how many people get involved.

I hate it for the seniors. Brayden Tussey has been through so much. Shoulder surgery last year and playing with a torn ACL the last half of this year. Many people didn’t know that. All they saw was a knee brace. Kaden has had elbow issues for the last 3 years. He missed most of his sophomore season due to it and the pain just kept appearing at random times. Unfortunately for him, it decided to return the last 3 weeks of the year. You can’t prepare for it.

Congratulations to Floyd Central. They have some great kids. Grew to know a lot of them over the years. They improved so much throughout the year and certainly showed up to play. Wish them nothing but the best against Lawrence and beyond.

I agree with most of this, but to say "there was nothing else he could've done to make this team better" feels like a cop out. He's the head coach. He sets the tone. This team looked exhausted and tight pretty much all of the times that I watched them play and I don't think I saw a smile from any of them throughout the season, even during the high moments. The high moments felt more like sighs of relief from them instead of celebration, which isn't good. I think that's on the coach. I don't think he should be fired, I think he is a good baseball coach, and hopefully he is able to learn from this season and improve the culture of this team moving forward and make playing baseball at Pburg fun for these boys again. Kids don't want to play ball if it isn't fun for them. Nothing more to it than that. It needs to be fun. This team didn't look like they had very much fun this year. Even losing tough games the way they did with an incredibly difficult schedule can still be fun with the right mentality at the top. If the culture from the top is mostly stress and worry and fear of making mistakes then your team is going to play tight, stressed and worried. I'm a firm believer that any HS ball team, in any sport, always ends up modeling and reflecting the attitude and culture that is promoted from the HC, and right now this area needs work. Again, I think Tucker is a good baseball coach, especially for Pburg, which is a very undesired job in the 15th, mostly due to political reasons. He is still young and has plenty of time and room to improve, but he has to be able to self-reflect and self-evaluate himself and objectively figure out what exactly went wrong this year for them to lose in the 1st round of the district with a fairly talented team (by traditional Pburg standards) and take a good portion of the blame for the failures of this season and learn and grow from it. If he does this then he'll be more than fine in the next couple of years at Pburg with alot of really good baseball talent coming up out of the middle school. As I'm sure you know, self-reflection is often a very hard thing for a lot of coaches (really for most people in general, for that matter), especially in the modern age of ppl like us getting on the internet and criticizing a lot of things, probably often too many things, but the best kind of coaches are always the ones that are great at exactly that kind of self reflection. They can hear criticism or see their mistakes and learn and grow from them and help everyone around them learn and grow in the process too. That's great leadership. They're always the ones that dig deeply into their flaws and try to correct them. Maybe that's the very thing that makes them great? The coaches that aren't very good at self reflection and self evaluation usually end up playing the victim card and blaming everybody around them for their problems to try to deflect all blame from themselves and it usually doesn't end well for them when that kind of stuff starts happening. Hopefully Tucker develops as the former instead of the latter. I believe he is good for the program and should not be fired for the way this season went, for what that's worth.

[Micro-Brew]

Well I sure didn’t have much fun just reading that post. Upon self reflection, I think I’m now depressed. Can I blame you for that? Lol