They were. They were part of the only class Nolan Cain had full control of while the recruiting coordinator (due to the way classes used to be built several years out). Cain was hired as a the recruiting coordinator from the OPS role, neither of which he had experience with before taking on. With OPS, that's generally an experience gathering position anyway, so no issues there. But I had an issue with Cain being brought on as the RC with no off campus recruiting experience. This was also at a time when Mainieri was only hiring former players and refusing to go outside his bubble, because of being burned by Andy Cannizaro.
So there were several years of Cain finding his way in the role. He gets a ton of credit for Crews, who he got primarily because he was first on him. Jordan Thompson was another good out of state pull. The other holdover guys were all in-state, which I will give credit for the evaluation and picking the right guys, but recruiting in state guys to LSU hasn't been an issue for 40 years.
And that staff did a pretty bad job on pitchers. We went 2 or 3 years with no lefties. And toward the end they were very poor at developing pitchers. With what has come out recently about Mainieri at South Carolina, the pitcher injuries at LSU under him make a lot more sense.
