After reading your post's, I think they are a inacccurate in many cases. There has been a lot of changes in Illinois baseball...as Illinois has faded UIC and NIU have been moving up, look what Mike Dee has done at UIc in the last few years and they will keep getting better, I mean who would have ever thought they would have done what they did last year and from what I have seen they will be doing it for a very long time, to show how good they are, they have a kid like Mike Bruzner coming off the bench. Ed mathey has been at NIU for two years, and had to deal with players and coaches from the lackluster shrage era....last year they suprised a lot of people and I can see them making a late run this year, and the best part is that two of their best pitchers followed Mathey from North Central. Now yes eastern and ISU have faided in the last few years, seeing it first hand I do not think that ISU will be succesful until brownlee is gone, a pluthera have players have left the program because of the way he treats players and they will continue to as long as he is here, and I believe that first place in the valley will be locked up by the shockers for a long time to come.
yes in deed its Jones's time to go, and word has it he is not leaving because the AD will not let pitching coach Dan Hartleb take over the program. To say that his tenure at Illinois has been bad, is not the truth. A lot of those loses have come in the last few years, when the battle began over who will get the program when he leaves. I was young, but around for when Itch first was at Illinois, with guys like Mark Delesandro, Scott Spezio, Sean Mulligan, yes they were leftover from Coach Gueredo (pardon my speeling) so they had a good program for a while...I beleive in 1998 they won the big ten, and then slowly faded. Illinois, prior to the last 2 years, has had some of the top pitching prospects in the midwest. Jason Anderson, Drew Dickenson, Matt Vorwald, Jimmy Journal and former Naperville 2 sport star Tim Lavery.
So to conclude, yeah some things have changed, but other schools have came up, and yes itch is way past his time, but to say his stay at U of I has been unproductive, isnt right. he has had a few bad years in a fading conference, that shouldnt overshadow the sucess that he had for a long time