Yep, Santa Claus was good to me, getting me out of the cave for a trip to Boston to see some college hockey played inside that old ball field on Yawkey Way. It was billed as “Frozen Fenway”, a double-header of college hockey pitting UMass vs. Vermont and the nightcap of Maine vs. New Hampshire, one of the great rivalries in all of puck-dom.

Luckily, my good man Steve Trimper, the Maine baseball coach, was kind enough to come through on some pretty sweet seats for the game for Mrs. StitchHead and I, so I am forever grateful to the Black Bear head honcho. And as luck would have it, Coach Trimper is also good friends with a couple of the Red Sox front office people, and was even able to bring me into the owner’s suite for part of the second game.

Coach Trimper and I in Fenway, soon after I presented him with a Stitch-Head t-shirt in a ceremony held between the two games of the double-header.

At that point, I realized I couldn’t waste a good opportunity, so I got my recorder out and decided to ask Coach Trimper about his 2011 teams’ strong finish, which meant a trip to the NCAA tournament, his rising stock in the coaching carousel and on his upcoming season, one in which his Black Bears are expected to contend with Stony Brook for the America East title, along with both teams being prime candidates to make some mid-major noise come this June.

Here’s the back and forth we did, fresh from the Fenway owner’s suite during the first intermission of the UMaine-UNH hockey game.

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Me:

First off, I know you’ve had inquiries and offers over the last year or two from other baseball programs, so what keeps you at Maine?

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Coach Trimper:

First and foremost it’s the support that Maine has for not just its baseball program but for all sports across the board. It’s one of the best kept secrets, really. We have about 300 baseball programs in Division 1, and it’s no knock against the programs from around the country, but you’ve only got about 60-70 athletic programs that really care about their baseball teams. And that’s what we’ve got here at Maine. So when you get the support of the alumni, the president, the fans, you realize that you have the chance to be pretty good every year. And the second part is that we’ve worked really hard at increasing the quality of our facilities and to promote the program and that really helps our recruiting in attracting better players. ‘Coz you can be the best coach in the world, but if you don’t have the horses you’re not going to win.

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Me:

What changes in college baseball have you seen in recent years that has given you guys a better chance to be consistent winners?

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Coach Trimper:

I’ve seen a lot of things happen since we got the new transfer rule, the change of season with start dates and practice times and all that stuff. In the last five years those things have made a huge impact on us and the northern programs, particularly being able to start practicing at the same time. But the transfer rules are even bigger because kids are no longer going to fly down and take a $500 book scholarship at a southern school because they know there’s a chance they’ll have to transfer. So they’re taking a longer look at places like ours.

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Me:

Let’s talk a little bit about last year, how much did you see that kind of season happening? You guys won 33 games, went to the Regionals and then played well down there in Chapel Hill. Did you think that team was capable of making those strides?

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Coach Trimper:

Quite honestly, I thought we had a more talented team the year before, in 2010, but I think the one thing that was missing was that culture of winning. You know teaching the guys how to win is part of what we do, but at places like Clemson, LSU, Florida State, they have that culture already set there and at the University of Maine, we did have that winning legacy, but the kids we had currently in the program had to understand that once again. And last year’s group did a tremendous job, but we still started four freshmen. So a lot of those kids started to buy into the thinking that ‘Hey, we’re just as good as the Clemsons and Florida State’s’ and started to concentrate on getting better than they were yesterday. Those guys last year really were the best ‘team’ I’ve ever coached.

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Me:

And what about this year. What do you think about what you’ve got coming back?

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Coach Trimper:

Well the good part is we’ve got just about everybody coming back. We had two guys drafted and signed in our centerfielder Taylor Lewis and our big pitcher Keith Bilodeau, but all the other kids come back a year more experienced and a year better. You know, when you send your players out to play summer ball, you always hope they’re going to come back a year better AND a year older, but it doesn’t always happen that way. But these guys did get better and on top of that we know these guys are pretty hungry for more.

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Me:

But your pitching staff is something I’m guessing you’re pretty fired up about, right?

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Coach Trimper:

Yeah, we’ve got Jeffrey Gibbs coming back, who will probably go in the top five rounds of the draft this year. And beyond Gibbs, we’ve got Stephen Perakslis and Shaun Coughlin who was a Freshman All American last season. And actually, Perakslis has turned the scouts on more than Gibbs. He’s a potential top-5 rounder as well. Gibbs is a no-brainer to go that high, but yeah, there are four or five scouts who have Perakslis rated higher than Gibbs right now. With the one-two punch of those guys, we have a chance to beat anybody. You know, as Freshmen, they went down there and knocked off North Carolina early in the season and everyone was wondering, ‘Who the hell ARE these guys?’ and now they’re even more mature after going to the Cape last season and pitching really well. And Coughlin isn’t quite a 94-95MPH guy  like Gibbs, he’s more 88-90 or so and he’s a battler. Those three guys are going to give us a chance every game each weekend. Then, we’ve got another kid. Jon Balentina, who’s going to be a great one too. He’s a kid from Curacao who had some arm injuries early on, he speaks five languages and is a grad student, really smart. If he does what he CAN do on the mound, he’s going to be our breakout guy this year. He’s a Tommy John guy from two years ago, was our best pitcher three years ago before the injury, but he really pitched well at the end of last year and is a full 100% for this year.

Ace Jeffrey Gibbs is a towerblock for what should be a standout pitching staff for UMaine in 2012.

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Me:

If you were to rate your team, what would be your strengths?

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Coach Trimper:

I’d rank our pitching first, then our defense second. We’ve got Mike Fransoso coming back at 2nd base, Troy Black, a Freshman All American at shortstop and Alex Calbick, another Freshmen All American at 3rd base, And we’ve got a 5th year senior back at 1st base in Justin Leisenheimer. So we’re pretty solid. Our hitting should be really good too. We should be where we were at the plate last year. Our guys totally morphed to the new bats, we really did. We’ve got fast kids, we can play the bunt game, we can hit and run. So we were that team that people like LSU were trying to become. We’ve got a couple of question marks, including our catching and some depth issues.

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Me:

Talk about your recruiting a little bit. I’m always intrigued to know how programs get guys and you have been able to get some good talent in the last few years.

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Coach Trimper:

Yeah, you know we’ve got a good little niche going. We’ve able to get our local kids from the state of Maine, which is usually two or three each year, then we’re going to get our Canadian kids after that. And we really hit Canada hard for a couple of reasons. One, there’s really good baseball played up there. We get a lot of kids off that Canadian National team because  Greg Hamilton is there and he’s a friend of mine he actually was a coach at Maine for a year before I got there, and he feeds us some names of guys we should go after. And secondly, we have an in-state tuition program for kids from Canada. So I can go up to a kid in Canada and for $20,000 they can go to school here, but we can give him a 50-or-60 percent scholarship and he’s going to choose that over going to a UCLA, or an Oregon State or any bigger name school because of the costs. So our scholarship dollars are going quite a bit longer for us up there, so we’re getting two or three quality guys. Guys like a Jeff Gibbs. Gibbs is as close as I’ve come to having a “major leaguer.” And the shocking part is that we were the only ones recruiting him. He got drafted out of high school by the Blue Jays, but he didn’t even know if he wanted to go to college. We weren’t sure if we had a chance at him and yet, here he is.

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Me:

So you’ve told me before that you don’t go to the Area Codes Games or anything, because of that, right?

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Coach Trimper:

Yeah. I may be giving away some of my secrets here, but I go to some of these Canadian showcase events and I may be one of five coaches there watching these kids. So instead of going to the Area Codes, I may sit there at some of these Canadian events and fight for these kids with four other schools instead of against the whole world for those Area Codes kids. And we’ve been getting our share of guys too from the Toronto area, the Montreal area, but also our 3rd baseman who was a Freshman All American last year, Alex Calbick, he’s a B.C. kid who came all the way across the country to play for us and he’s a great talent.

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Me:

So you mentioned a couple of guys playing in the Cape Cod League last summer.

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Coach Trimper:

Yeah, we had five in all there this past year, including Gibbs and Perakslis. And this coming summer we’re going to have six guys play down there, so that tells you a lot about the type of talent we’ve had coming through here.

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Me:

Considering the progress you’ve made and the talent you’ve built up, does the RPI drive you crazy?

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Coach Trimper:

Yes. We finished last season with an RPI of 154. But I remember getting the report when we finished our non-conference portion of the schedule and our RPI was at No. 97 or 98, something like that. We went 18-6 in our conference, which included a bad loss to Hartford, and our RPI fell huge. But I’ll say this, both Stony Brook and ourselves, we can compete with anybody. Stony Brook had a hell of a team last year, and will again this year. I’ve seen you write about how the mid-majors don’t get enough love in the past, but this year is certainly the year where Maine could beat Stony Brook or Stony Brook could beat Maine and yet the loser could very easily go to a Regional somewhere and  beat some people. Now there’s nothing we can do about it, but the big thing is how the RPI will change in 2013 where they’re going to weigh heavily your road wins and what you do at the end of the season. Too bad it’s not in effect this year because the way things worked out, we’ve only got 12 home games. So we could use that boost this year.

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Me:

So this year is sort of THE year you had circled, right?

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Coach Trimper:

Yeah, we did. But saying we’re going to be good and being good on paper isn’t a plane ticket to Omaha or anything. Nothing is guaranteed. I told the guys, ‘Look, just because people think we’re going to be good doesn’t guarantee us a spot in the post-season.’ I think that Stony Brook’s in the same boat. I’ve got to give a ton of credit to Stony Brook, they’re going to be a really good team and I hope that we can both have a great season together so that maybe, just maybe, we can have two America East teams in the tournament and make a little thunder while we’re there. I don’t even know if that’s possible, but I hope that it is because I think we’re both going to be very good.

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Me:

As a mid-major or a lower-level conference, whatever you want to call yourself, what do you tell your kids is the goal for each year?

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Coach Trimper:

Well that’s a lot of pressure to put on a team to say ‘we want to play in Omaha.’ Our goals always are to win the conference and get into the Regionals. But I will say that I don’t think it’s very far away for a Maine, or a Stony Brook or a UConn to get into a Super Regional and cause a little bit a thunder. That’s more of a realistic goal for us. Any two days or any three days you can beat a team and get to Omaha, but it’s never ‘Omaha or bust.’ We tell our guys that we are going to play extremely tough schedules out of conference, so don’t get frustrated with wins or losses at any part of the year. Watch us develop every single day and every single week, then go out and win our conference. But I really think this is a special year where Stony Brook and ourselves, if we can get some of those crazy wins early on… you never know. You never know.

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Me:

Okay, last thing. And I realize this is a loaded question. But do you ever see yourself doing the Jack Leggett-type of thing and leave Maine for a big-money program in the ACC or SEC or Pac 10?

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Coach Trimper:

Well it’s a fair question. I don’t think you ever rule anything out in your career. You just don’t. And there are a lot of coaches out there who have great runs at their schools and deserve a chance to make even bigger strides at a school with more money and resources. Now, Dan McDonnell, the coach at Louisville, is telling people all the time that he likes his resources. Meanwhile, the coach at Maine, I’m telling people all the time that I like my resources. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that an SEC school has a pretty good set-up. But I’ll tell you this, I couldn’t be happier than I am at Maine right now. We get great support, we’ve got a good following, we’re the only spring sport on campus, besides softball and women’s track. Also, there are many days during the season where I wake up and I go fishing or hunting for an hour or two and by 10am, I’m in the office and already have had a great day. This is my world. And other than the snow in January and February (laughs…) there are no drawbacks to this job.

A picture and caption taken from Collegiate Baseball's September 3rd, 2004 issue. Love the shot, had to pirate it here.

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NOTES.

- Had a great time hangin’ with coach Trimper and his wife Lisa at the Frozen Fenway. Of course there were a number of other things we talked about during the games, including his connections with the Boston Red Sox front office and his ability to use Fenway for games in the future (more about that in a minute). It was also interesting to get his take on the conference tournaments. He’s not against them (even though if his team wins the regular season and then goes cold the last weekend in May, it might change his mind), but he DID say that choosing a neutral site in advance is the best way to handle the venue, like the Big 10 has done in playing at Huntington Park in Columbus. Currently, the AmEast plays the tournament at the regular season champ’s home park, which is good for rewarding the champions. But for travel purposes and attendance, it’s terrible. Coach gave the example of a few years ago where the Black Bears finished the final weekend of AmEast play at Vermont, bussed home six hours to Orono that Sunday night, then turned around and bussed back on Tuesday for the tournament.

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- After twittering about the number of teams that coach Trimper told me who had turned down invitations to play UMaine in a game at Fenway Park, I am happy to report that an ACC team has made an about-face and said “Yes” to the invitation of playing in the old park. And of course, I’m taking full credit for stoking the fire for somebody to say “yes.” (I prefer to call it a way of “shaming” power teams into it… ha.). Can’t give out any details on it yet, but I’ll let you know when the game is official.

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- In case you were wondering, the Frozen Four double-header ended up being a pair of overtime games, each decided in the first three minutes of the extra period. UMass beat Vermont 3-2 and UMaine beat New Hampshire 5-4.

The Black Bears celebrate another goal vs. UNH. (Nope, not my photo. This was taken by Melissa Wade)

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- Maine and New Hampshire were given the better treatment for the games, being that those two played in the second game of the marquee event. So the Black Bears and Wildcats were housed in the Red Sox and visiting locker rooms. But UMass and Vermont were forced to use a makeshift locker room formed out of the batting cages on either side of the locker rooms.

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- Who was I pulling for? Well of course, I was hoping the two eventual victors would win the hockey games. What do you want me to do, cheer for Vermont or New Hampshire?! Dude, those schools don’t even have baseball programs. To hell with them.

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- It was far from a sellout for the games at Fenway. But the attendance was pretty impressive as 38,456 New Englanders stopped by to see the spectacle. That’s pretty impressive, especially considering there weren’t a lot of “good” seats for the games. Here’s a view of how the rink was situated inside the stadium.

As you see, it's not like they lined the rink up alongside one of the grandstands or along the foul lines, so there were few "good" seats for watching hockey in Fenway. Most of the patrons just watched the game on the giant Jumbotron in center field.

Tennessee's Todd Raleigh is about to find out that the affable A.J. Lostaglio is no wilting daisy at times.

And by the way, whatever happened to calling the umpire “Ump” instead of “Blue”? From what I’ve seen, the umpires in college baseball rarely wear blue, in fact they most often wear black, as you’ll see in the pictures of A.J. here.

I’ve always appreciated the thankless job that college baseball umpires have. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I dig their work. Earlier this week I got the chance to talk to one of the best in the business in A.J. Lostaglio, a veteran SEC/ACC umpire who worked last year’s College World Series.

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ES:

So I saw you had worked last year’s College World Series, was that your first series?

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A.J.:

No, actually I have been lucky enough to have worked two others before that in 2002 and 2005.

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ES:

Would you say that’s your biggest thrill in your umpiring career?

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A.J.:

By far, yes it is. And it’s something that I will continue to work hard to get back to. It’s something that every umpire should get a chance to do once in his career and as I said, I’ve been lucky to work it three times.

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ES:

In game situations, what do you think is the toughest call you have to make?

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A.J.:

There’s no doubt that the two calls that are always a major challenge are the check swing and the trap catch. Those two things are just real tough calls, you could almost flip a coin on most of them. Especially the trap ball catch in the outfield because there are so many variables that go into making that call. You’ve got to be stationary, you’ve got to have the proper angle, you’ve gotta have the proper distance. You can see a slo-motion replay and say, ‘Man, how could he miss that?’ but when you’re on the field of play everything in that kind of call happens so fast.

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ES:

Is the use of instant replay for assisting with calls something you would be alright with in the future?

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A.J.:

Anything that shows the high percentage of times hard-working umpires are right, I’m in favor of. Also, we have an obligation to get the call correct, so why not utilize a tool like replay to help us in that regard? So yes, I’m certainly in favor of it.

A.J. Lostaglio was the home plate umpire when I went to the Florida-FAU game in Jupiter, Florida on the first Tuesday of the season.

ES:

Just watching you out there, I can tell you’re a gregarious guy, how much of a rapport do you have with players during a game?

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A.J.:

I think it’s important to keep that neutral position and maintain a certain demeanor on the field. I’m never gonna buddy up to a player but you have to earn his respect. So you have to recognize a great play when you see one and let him know that. I might say, “Man, that was a great catch” or “That was a sweet play.”  When they realize you can salute their effort on the field but still integrate things that allow you to do your job with integrity, I think players respect you more.

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ES:

The game I saw you work between Florida and Florida Atlantic earlier this year, it seemed like you were talking a lot with FAU’s catcher Mike Albaladejo.

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A.J.:

That’s a good point. Catchers can be your best friend or your worst enemy and I think it’s important to get them on your side and show them that you are working hard back there for them. And you want them to work hard for you. I’ve taken some shots from pitches in the dirt because you get a catcher that is laboring in the hot sun for six or seven innings and maybe they don’t get down to block a ball late in the game. But I want them to know that there is still somebody behind them working hard all game long. Believe me, my mother appreciates it and my girlfriend appreciates it if they work hard to do their job back there too. (Laughs)

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ES:

How much do you put up with before you eject a coach out of the game?

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A.J.:

There are some comments that get personal and involve profanity and those will get you tossed right away. Coaches know that. The last two ejections that I have had have come from coaches that were frankly just frustrated at their teams’ performance and it was quite apparent they wanted to get run to light a fire under them. But it’s not like it was years ago when you could read them the Riot Act and then they make the adjustment and we move on. Now they don’t want you to look like the aggressor at all, so I’ve learned to take a step back and maintain my composure as often as I can and give them all the rope they need to hang themselves.

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ES:

Is it weird the next day when you have the meeting at home plate with a guy that you ejected the day before?

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A.J.:

I guess it’s uncomfortable to someone who is fairly new to the job. But I realized from day one that each day is a new day. Even at home when you were a kid, your dad would yell at you and that problem is taken care of, then boom, you move on. It doesn’t help either party if you let things fester and build up internally. It’s the same with umpiring. You just have to do your job that day and when the next day comes around, it’s all water under the bridge.

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ES:

Have you ever had a moment like Jim Joyce last year during that near-perfect game and thought to yourself, ‘Man, I really blew that call.’?

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A.J.:

You know what, nothing comes to mind. But if I ever have had a moment like that then I did the best thing I could do and that was to forget about it and move on. I’ve been fortunate that nothing like that has come about in my career. Of course, now that I’ve said that, I’ll go work the FIU game tonight and won’t be able to sleep because a call like that will happen. (Laughs)

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ES:

Other than the College World Series, do you have a favorite park to work at?

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A.J.:

I really love working at the parks in the SEC and ACC. They’re all great with great fans. But I will say, the playing surface at Georgia Tech is the best I’ve ever worked on. I don’t even want to spit sunflower seeds on that because it’s so pristine. I can work 25 innings on that field and still feel like I’m 25 years old. It’s so easy on your knees, it’s incredible. The grass is like a putting green and there are no dips or bumps. I’m really in awe of that playing surface.

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ES:

I’ve noticed you’re a really nice guy. When you go onto the field, do you have to put on a bit of a different persona?

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A.J.:

It’s funny you should ask that, because I think that can be a misperception if people want to mistake my kindness as a weakness. I am also someone that coaches know I’m not going to give them a long leash and I’m going to take care of business. I feel like I rule with a firm hand, not necessarily an iron fist, because I don’t believe you have to be someone who has a chip on their shoulder to get the job done.

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ES:

I’ve always wanted to ask an umpire this, when a player starts to go toward first base thinking he just got ball four, but you call a strike, is it really a case of the player ’showing up the umpire’ as you hear?

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A.J.:

I think it gets blown out of proportion and it’s a generalization that people make without being able to read the situation like we do. I truly believe that a majority of the time it’s an honest mistake and a player really thought the pitch was a ball. In fact, many of those situations you have the player come back and apologize for doing so. It’s definitely not a ’showing up’ kind of thing.

And what I mean by that is that it represents everything that is bad about college athletics today. And not that you’re going to find many people on the Fort Worth campus that are against it, Lordy no.

TCU's uber-successful mastermind, Jim Schlossnagle, likes the move to the Big East

It’s a move that is predicated solely on money, power and football. And under the surface, the real problem is that this move was also brought on by the fact that there is no playoff in college football and the BCS controls everything.

If the Horned Frogs had a chance to play for the national title or have an automatic bid to the lucrative BCS as a conference champion, they never would’ve moved from the Mountain West. Hell, they might not have moved from Conference USA a few years ago.

But because the seedy bowl system has screwed college football so bad and made the BCS the exclusive good-ole-boys club that it is, programs have to do whatever they can to learn the secret handshake so they can get into that treehouse that houses the golden goose. Survival of the fittest in the world of big money college football.

The TCU jump to that conference on the Eastern seaboard reminds me of why I love college baseball so much more than college football. They had to go there because they needed to cash in on BCS money and also because the big-money conferences have made sure they couldn’t compete for a national title. Can you imagine if Fresno State didn’t get the chance to go to Omaha in 2008 and instead had to play a de facto exhibition game in St. Petersburg, Florida against a Conference USA team at the end of the regular season instead?

But there’s one person out there who had a “get over it” message for me concerning all this TCU/Big East thing; Frogs baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle.

He’s taken more than just an it-is-what-it-is-so-let’s-just-move-on mindset about it all. He’s even excited about the move too.

Ever since the Frog football team finished another unbeaten regular season, I was looking forward to talking with the TCU stitched-ball skipper once again. Last year at this time, I was in his office at Lupton Stadium and we were lamenting the Frog footballers getting screwed by the BCS and getting matched up with Boise, instead of a BCS-conference big boy. Fast forward 12 months later, here we are again. This time, we also had last year’s trip to Omaha and his teams’ pursuit of making it there again this June.

Here’s how it went:

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Me:

So coach, here we are 360-some odd days later than the last time I talked with you, and once again your school’s football team is unbeaten and not going to the national championship game. So let’s put this in a hypothetical baseball scenario; what if you guys were unbeaten in the regular season and you went to some bowl game for baseball instead of playing it out for a national championship. What would you feel about that?

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Coach Schlossnagle:

Shew! I would be immensely disappointed. I never want to coach in a sport where there’s some sort of artificial barrier between your team and being able to play for a national championship. You know, I’ve watched our team play all year and, I’m biased, but I think they are good enough to play for a national championship and line up against Auburn or Oregon and see what happens.

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Me:

I know you and Coach Patterson are pretty good friends, has he said anything to you about this being the second straight year to go unbeaten and still no title shot? Do you know his feelings on that?

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Coach Schlossnagle:

We don’t talk about it that much. He does a much better job than I do of not talking about those kind of things until there’s something realistic to talk about. So I think if they beat Wisconsin and end up undefeated, knowing him as I do, I’d be surprised if he doesn’t show his true feelings afterward. I know he’s a big believer in the bowl system – he and I disagree on that – ‘coz as coaches like to say, nobody ever has a bad bowl experience… of course, now there’s 35 bowl games, so everyone gets to go to them. But there’s got to be a way to decide things on the field while keeping the bowls in place. I don’t know. It’s bothersome to me as a college football fan… but I’ll just worry about keeping Matt Purke healthy.

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Me:

Let’s move on to the Big East thing. I know I had read in the Fort Worth Star Telegram that you were excited about the move. And this kind of goes back to the college football influence on the matter, but it kind of pissed me off that you guys were forced to go so far away so you could get into a BCS conference in football. But tell me your feelings on it.

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Coach Schlossnagle:

Well, what I think people have to get over is that in the old days conferences were put together and stayed together because of proximity. Those days are over with. Nowadays it’s all about television and media markets and viewing audiences. I remember when I first got here there were conversations about our school and the Big East and the ACC at that time and the thing that our administration was telling us was that the thing working against the move to either one was geography. So now, here we are six/seven years later and that doesn’t matter anymore. Everybody here is excited, including me. And I’ve always been a big fan of the Mountain West, I’ve been in the conference for nine-to-ten years, including my time with UNLV. And I’ve always said that there have been four or five teams, now with Fresno included in there, that have built-in advantages like weather, facilities, access to talent. I’ve always thought if those programs perform to the level they’re capable of, we’d have a four-or-five bid league every year.

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Me:

Oh, you know I agree with that.

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Coach Schlossnagle:

That happened for us in 2009, but one of the things I’ve always wanted was to be in a league where you didn’t have to win the conference in order to host a Regional. So moving forward to the Big East, if you look at last year, it happened with UConn. The Mountain West was ranked the No. 10 conference and the Big East was No. 6. And if we would’ve been in the Big East last year, I think that would’ve jumped the conference into the top five of the RPI. And that’s encouraging because I’m all for playing the best people. And I’m from the Baltimore area and have a lot of family out there. So I’ll get to see them more. Louisville has been the standard-bearer the last few years and now UConn is coming on, and I really admire what Pittsburgh has done. They finished 38-18 and I believe they were in the top 40 of the RPI last year. And we all know the potential that South Florida has and that Notre Dame’s been to Omaha. So it’s a great league and we’re looking forward to it.

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Me:

I think it’s interesting what you’ve said about the travel, compared to the Mountain West.

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Coach Schlossnagle:

Yeah, the average flight will increase for us by an average of 100-to-120 miles, but really, big deal, it’s still a plane ride. But more importantly on Sundays we get to come home East to West instead of West to East, which makes a big difference in terms of what time you get there, get back in bed at night and for when those guys can get into class on Monday.

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Me:

What was your first knee-jerk reaction? And also the knee-jerk reaction of the other coaches there at TCU?

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Coach Schlossnagle:

My reaction was that I was excited because that’s where I was from. And of course, there wasn’t really a knee-jerk reaction because I had heard bits about it over a few weeks time and it was a little hush-hush. But I think our basketball coaches are excited… or well, they’re cautiously excited. They know how competitive of a conference it is going to be for them to go into. That might be the best league in all of college basketball and a coach who looks at it in the wrong way is going to be worried about competing in a conference like that. But a coach that is going into it the right way is going to be fired up knowing the opportunity in front of him. I mean, imagine going into the home of a recruit that lives in Dallas, Houston or San Antonio and telling them they are going to play college basketball in their home state, but our conference games are going to be in the best conference in the country and you get to play in places like Madison Square Garden and Philadelphia and Chicago and places like that, I would like to think any coach is going to be able to maximize their program quickly. And if there’s one thing TCU is committed to, it’s winning. We had 16 sports out of 20 last year that competed in NCAA championships in the post-season. For a school with an enrollment of 7,500 or so, that’s really impressive.

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Me:

Last thing on the Big East. Deep down – and I’m talking in a perfect world scenario here – wouldn’t the competitor in you rather have been in a conference where you get to beat Texas A&M and Texas and those in-state teams every year?

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Coach Schlossnagle:

Well sure. As a competitor, you want to have the chance to beat the best people, especially those that are close to you, but that’s unrealistic to think right now in this climate. But again, the best thing about college baseball is that we do have a tournament. Schools like TCU, Cal State Fullerton, Wichita State, Rice and Tulane have proven that you don’t have to be in a BCS league to compete at the highest level. And we personally never talk about winning conference championships. Our ultimate goal is to win the national title, but the base of the pyramid for accomplishing that is to win 40 games. If you win 40 games against a good schedule, you give yourself a chance to host a Regional in the post-season. So that was always our initial goal whether we were in Conference USA or the Mountain West or when we get to the Big East.

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Me:

Talk just a bit about Omaha itself. What was the experience like? What are your overall impressions, looking back?

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Coach Schlossnagle:

Well I had been to Omaha before as an assistant coach at Tulane, so in comparison to being there as an assistant and watching it for years on television, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. But as it turned out, it was significantly more than I expected it to be this time around, primarily because of the way the people of Omaha took to our team. I’ve talked to writers and media that have been there for 30 or 40 years and, the game against Florida State where Curry hit that home run, they told me that’s the loudest they’ve ever heard Rosenblatt stadium for a College World Series game. I even told our players beforehand it would be a little bit of a disappointment because we just got done playing at Texas in the Super Regionals where it was like a football-type of crowd there. Very electric. So I told them in was going to be more of a neutral atmosphere. But then when we get there for the opening ceremony, they introduce all eight teams and we’re the only one they give a standing ovation and then they cheer for us like crazy for the next six or seven days. It was phenomenal.

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Me:

Now, is there anything you would do differently if you go back again this year or in the near future?

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Coach Schlossnagle:

Honestly, no. And I don’t want to sound like I’ve got it all figured out because obviously, we didn’t win it all. But I thought our kids handled it well, they weren’t nervous and we did a good job of balancing the games and the experience. I was very specific with them by telling them ‘Look, I want you to have two personalities. On the day we play, I want you to be locked-in to playing baseball. And the days we don’t play, I want you to be a College World Series fan.’ And I actually sought out some advice from coach Graham at Rice, Mike Batesole at Fresno State, coach Fox from North Carolina and even coach Bertman from LSU and the one thing I came away with from all that is if you think you’re going to look a 19-20 year-old in the eye and tell him to block out all the distractions, it’s not going to happen. And really, you don’t want it to happen, you want them to have a good time on and off the field. And our kids did a great job of handling it all.

Happy as a Frog on a log. TCU had a good time in Omaha last June.

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Me:

I wanted to ask you, having lived in the Metorplex before, I know how big of a pro sports area it is and not so much of a college sports crazy area. What was the local media like last year when you guys were making your run? Were you pleased with the local coverage you got?

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Coach Schlossnagle:

You know, I was. The Fort Worth Star Telegram kept us on the front page every day. And obviously I wasn’t there while we were in Omaha, but I had people back home telling me how the local news was talking about us and every day we were up there I was on some local sports radio show back in Dallas-Fort Worth, so I was pleased with the coverage. And that’s been one of the goals of our program, to build a program that had some relevance in the community. Not just from winning games and attendance. But I heard stories about people having watching parties at their house and restaurants shutting down during our games and that’s the kind of stuff I like to hear about.

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Me:

Okay, let’s get to this year’s team. Is it kind of one of those “Alright, it’s Omaha or nothing” for this team?

Matt Purke was crushed after being eliminated at last year's College World Series.

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Coach Schlossnagle:

Well our goal is to win the national championship, but that’s the same goal every year. I think you’ve got to get into the season and see what happens. I hate to sound “coachy” but you want your team to achieve what it’s capable of doing. Certainly, on paper, having our entire rotation back is big and having seven of nine starters back is also big. But we also had some significant losses too. Ask me about a month and a half into the season and I’ll have a better idea of what we’re capable of. But we have that many starters back off an Omaha club and they’re still really hungry. They have that taste of what it’s like to be there. I don’t have to sell them on the Omaha experience. Believe me, they’re motivated to get back.

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Me:

I know the freshman class isn’t quite as ballyhooed as last year’s was, but I’m sure there are still some new guys you’re excited about, especially on the mound, right?

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Coach Schlossnagle:

It wasn’t a very big class since we had so many guys returning for us. But there are a few guys that will fit in right away. We have three or four right-handed guys that are going to pitch a lot for us; a kid named Tony Rizzotti, who was drafted by the Rockies, a right hander named Andrew Mitchell and another right hander named Stefan Crichton… those three guys are really going to have an impact on our program and are going to pitch a fair amount for us this year. And assuming Purke and Winkler have good years and sign, all three of those freshmen will have very significant roles next year, considering there will be a lot of turnover on the staff.

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Me:

And I was really bummed to hear about Kaleb Merck and the Tommy John surgery. Is he going to make a full recovery and be back for next year.

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Coach Schlossnagle:

He will. He will. It was just a really unfortunate thing. He was really coming into his own and pitched really well in Omaha. He also had a great summer on the Cape and frankly, he was ready for an All American-type of year to be quite honest with you. He was the best prospect on our team after Purke. But the silver lining is that it happened early, so he’ll be nearly 18 months out from surgery by the time next season comes around. So we think he’ll really be ready to go.

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Me:

Okay, last thing coach, ‘coz I’m keeping you longer than I told you I was going to. Have you found a way to get a 5th year of eligibility for (catcher) Bryan Holaday yet?

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Coach Schlossnagle:

(laughs) He’s actually right downstairs hitting in the cage as we speak.

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Me:

Shocking.

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Coach Schlossnagle:

Yeah, he never stops working. He’s back from his instructional league and working out here in the off-season. And believe me, if I could figure out a way we could do it, I would for sure. He was special. He really was. You don’t come across players like that too often.

Bryan Holaday has doffed his batting helmet for the last time in a TCU uniform.

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A COUPLE OF POST SCRIPTS.

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THE MOUNTAIN WEST AND THE BIG EAST.

As coach Schlossnagle talked about above, the Big East did have a better season last year, with an RPI at No. 6 in the country. Here’s how the two conferences compare over the seasons:

The RPI conferences rankings:

2010:

Big East No. 6

MWC No. 10

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2009:

Big East No. 10

MWC No. 7

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2008:

Big East No. 11

MWC No. 15

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2007:

Big East No. 9

MWC No. 18

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2006:

Big East No. 14

MWC No. 19

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2005:

Big East No. 11

MWC No. 22

As you see, in five of the last six seasons, the Big East had the better RPI ranking than the Mountain West. But interestingly, if you look at Boyd Nation’s ISR rankings, which is the rating system that is less bias against the West, here are how the comparisons between the conferences shake out for the same time period.

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The ISR conference rankings:

2010:

Big East No. 11

MWC No. 6

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2009:

Big East No. 15

MWC No. 7

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2008:

Big East No. 15

MWC No. 9

.

2007:

Big East No. 14

MWC No. 10

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2006:

Big East No. 18

MWC No. 9

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2005:

Big East No. 18

MWC No. 16

As you can see, it’s a different story with this rating system. (For an explanation between the two, go to Boyd’s FAQ page, he can explain it to you better since he’s way more intelligent than I am.). So as you can see, the Mountain West may actually be a better conference, but of course, the RPI is the system that is used by the NCAA to help determine relative conference strength and where teams should be seeded for the tournament. So obviously, the move to the Big East in these terms is good for the Frogs.

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EXPANDING LUPTON.

One of the more interesting things coach Schlossnagle told me was about TCU’s plans to increase the capacity of Lupton Stadium. According to coach Schloss, the increase will be by 1,000 seats, which will all come with the expansion of the upper deck down each baseline. Both sides of the upper deck are being fully extended above the lower seating area past the dugouts. That should increase the capacity to 4,500 seats.

Lupton Stadium as it looks now. The additions to the upper deck should be completed before the 2011 season.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Just to let you guys know, you’ll notice that I recorded this Baldcast on Sunday afternoon following Sunday’s Vanderbilt-LSU game. So excuse me for not commenting on axis-tilting results like Oregon State’s sweep of Oregon, the Arkansas two-hitter at Ole Miss or TCU’s magnanimous 25-6 cascading of New Mexico. You catch my drift. 

And following the jump are some interviews with LSU’s Paul Mainieri and Vanderbilt’s Tim Corbin that I did prior to this weekend series in Baton Rouge.

I have an admission to make. Last week, when I was putting together a Q&A with Paul Mainieri for my ESPN Weekend Preview, I wasn’t concerned about the length of the feature. But I s’pose ESPN was. They cut out a significant portion of the back-and-forth I had with Coach Mainieri. So, in fairness to coach, I’m going to go ahead and post the full interview here.

And also, I got the chance to talk with Vandy head honcho Tim Corbin about an hour before Friday’s first game. You’ll see it posted down below the Mainieri interview. 

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MY Q&A WITH LSU’s PAUL MAINIERI

One of the most intriguing teams in college baseball over the last few weeks has been the LSU Tigers. As the defending national champions and the hottest program in the last 20 years, the Tigers seem to have a Yankees-eque, you-either-hate-’em-or-you-love-’em feel to them. That’s what makes their recent losing skid so interesting, no matter what side of the fence you align yourself. I caught up with the Tiger maestro Paul Mainieri to reflect back on a few things and to get a bead on his team as the Tigers sit at a crossroads heading into their series with Vanderbilt this weekend.

Paul Mainieri is in the middle of a trying season for his program. Here, he has some intense words for Tyler Hanover in the Sunday loss to Vanderbilt.

Of course, it also dawned on me that the last time I actually talked with him over the phone after a weekend of action was last year after the Tigers had lost two of three to Illinois. 

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Me:

Coach, thanks for taking the time to talk with me here today, I promise I’m not calling you just because you guys had a bad weekend at Florida.

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Coach Mainieri: 

(Laughs) Don’t worry about that Eric. You’re fine.

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Me:

Since you had built the program back up to last year’s national title, you haven’t had adversity like this stretch now. Is there anything different about how people are treating you there?

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Coach Mainieri: 

As far as how they’re treating me here in Baton Rouge, it’s been nothing but kindness. You know, I don’t go on those chat sites where people hide behind anonymous names and say nasty things. I don’t think that’s reflective of the way people generally speak. I can tell you that over these last couple of weeks I’ve received many supportive phone calls, e-mails and text messages. 

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Me:

So the true fans there understand, right?

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Coach Mainieri: 

Oh yeah. I think sometimes people interpret fanaticism with up-and-down attitudes about a team and about coaches. I think people here at LSU appreciate effort. They’re smart people and smart fans, they understand when things go wrong there’s reasons behind that. You know, nothing is perfect. We started out 32-and-6. That was the second-best 38-game start in the history of LSU baseball. We had to play a series at Ole Miss and at Florida, two of the most difficult places to play in the country. At Ole Miss, we came close to winning one or two of those games. At Florida, granted, they handled our pitching early and we got into a hole all three games. And both of those type of things can happen in baseball. I think the majority of LSU fans understand that you can hit these potholes in a long season. You know, if we lose the remaining 11 games on our schedule, well, then you’ve got a good story. 

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Me:

Have you changed anything in your approach with your team, be it in practice or addressing them after some of these games?

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Coach Mainieri: 

I’ve always said this, the biggest challenge that a coach faces is when things don’t go well. How does he react? This is when a coach really earns his salary. Anybody can coach a team when things are going great and everybody’s happy. But when things go against you and knock you for a loop, that’s when a coach springs into action. And I think my track record is pretty good when it comes to getting players to get back to winning and feeling positive about themselves. You just tell them that sometimes you’re going to stumble a little bit and it’s just a matter of telling them that it’s not whether you’re gonna get knocked down, it’s gonna be a matter of how you react when you do get knocked down.

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Me:

So the message is getting through to them?

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Coach Mainieri: 

Oh sure. I’ve been telling my players over the last couple of days that, ‘okay, we just finished a very difficult seven-game stretch. We went 0-7. Now we just have to accept it like men and now we need to regroup, start all over and let’s get after it.’ Like I said Eric, if we can have a good last 11 games of the year, then we’re looking at a 40-win regular season. And if you finish in the top four or five of the SEC, that’s a good season. I mean, go back and check the records, in Skip Bertman’s 18 years, they didn’t win the SEC every year. They didn’t win the national championship every year, even though there are LSU fans that think they did. (Laughs)

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Me:

Well let me ask this then, are you feeling any real pressure for the first time, or are you taking it in stride?

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Coach Mainieri: 

The pressure I’m feeling now is only the pressure I put on myself. I don’t like losing and I wanna get out of this funk as soon as possible. Now, am I feeling pressure from the fans? Or from the administration? No. I wouldn’t admit it if I did, because I don’t think about those kind of things. I really don’t. I’m not going to go into the stadium tonight and say, ‘ma , there are 11,000 people here and they’re gonna be really mad at me if we lose.’ I’m not going to worry about walking into the office tomorrow morning and the athletic director standing there with a pink slip. I can’t operate that way. I’ve said this many many many times to my players and to myself, there’s only one person you have to answer to and that’s the person in the mirror every morning.

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Me:

Now I know you tried some different things with your pitching staff, like having Matty Ott start on Sunday and he got pretty lit up pretty good by Florida. Are you concerned with Ott and Anthony Ranaudo not pitching up to his potential down the stretch of the season?

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Coach Mainieri: 

I’m not concerned about either one of those guys really. With Matty Ott, we tried something new and I don’t regret starting him in the game. I think it was what we had to try to do to get us off to a good start to Sunday’s game. I know Matty’s a great closer and he fits that role well for us, it just didn’t work out. He’ll be fine though. And Anthony is not a real concern either, although he certainly hasn’t pitched like he’s capable of at all this year. The game at Ole Miss was really weird because the winds were blowing out at 30 miles an hour and he gave up three pop-up hits that ended up home runs and it made it seem a lot worse than it really was. Then he took that line drive off the leg at Florida, where we were hoping he would settle in. So we had to take him out of that game earlier than we planned. But his leg is fine now and we think he’ll pitch better down the stretch. 

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Me:

I heard a friend of mine on your radio show the other night asking you about pitchers you’ve had in recent years like Jared Bradford and Louis Coleman. You gave an interesting answer about how you miss having guys like that now.

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Coach Mainieri: 

Every so often a coach is blessed to have a player that just has a special quality about him. When I was at Notre Dame I had a guy like that named Aaron Heilman. My first two years here at LSU, we had Jared Bradford and last year Coleman had evolved into that type of guy too. These were guys that when your team was down after a loss, you could give that guy the ball and your team knew he was going to pitch his heart out and it inspired the team. And we just don’t have that type of guy on this team, that’s something we’re lacking right now. There’s still more season left to play and hopefully somebody will emerge to be that special kind of pitcher that has that extra ingredient. It may be that some of our pitchers are just too young to move into that role yet, so it’s not like we’re going to give up on anybody. 

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Me:

Given the rough stretch here, talk about your team’s mental toughness and their work ethic, any concerns about that?

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Coach Mainieri: 

No, I don’t have any concerns at all with either one of those things. The players are still on board. Nobody’s pointing fingers. They’re working just as hard. It’s a good group. The players have been wonderful. We know that we just need to pitch a little bit better and we’ve had some trouble coming up with the clutch hit. We don’t have as much power as we’ve had in recent years and, as you know, hitting home runs can cure a lot of ills on a team. But the players have been wonderful, they’ve got a great attitude toward the rest of the year. 

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Me:

Okay, I know we haven’t talked about Vanderbilt yet. What do you see with them? What are your feelings heading into this weekend?

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Coach Mainieri: 

Well, all you have to do is look at the stat sheet and the thing that jumps off the page is that they lead the SEC in pitching, they’ve got some tremendous arms. Their starting pitching is outstanding and they’ve got some guys coming out of the bullpen that are really tough. They’ve got great hitting too. They’re a complete team. 

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Me:

Would you agree with me that it’s odd to see them just over .500 in the conference?

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Coach Mainieri: 

Sure. Their overall record is really good, but their conference record is only 10-9, which is a little bit of an enigma. I know they had a couple of rainouts against Georgia that I’m sure they felt pretty confident they could’ve won those games at home. But their statistics show that they should be better than their record shows in the league. So they’re tough. And this is a really talented team we’re going to go up against. I know that Sonny Gray, their Friday night starter is going to be a first-round draft pick next year, so it’s time for Anthony Ranaudo is going to have to be back on his game for us to meet that challenge. It’ll be a great challenge for us. But quite frankly, we are really excited to be back home after being on the road for the last two weekends. 

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MY Q&A WITH VANDERBILT’S TIM CORBIN.

One of the bigger success stories in the decades of the 2000s was the emergence of Vanderbilt as a consistant national power and their knack for getting stronger as the decade went on. The groundwork was laid out by former longtime head coach Roy Mewbourne, but the program still had five straight losing seasons prior to the arrival of new head coach Tim Corbin. As a former assistant at Clemson under the tutelage of the legendary Jack Leggett, Corbin totally transformed the program into a constant winner.

Taking his cues from Leggett and possessing an inner drive that is mean-set on making the national championship a reality, Coach Corbin attacks his job like a bull in the ring having a singular mindset. Winning. 

I caught up with the New England native (he was raised just outside of Boston) during their Friday pre-game warmup before game one at LSU. Corbin’s charges would eventually take two of three from the defending national champions in their own raucous back yard. See? The guy’s a bulldog. 

Here, Tim Corbin says something humorous to me.

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Me: 

First of all coach, I know you’re from the Boston area, so the most important question obviously is, Bobby Orr… great hockey player? Or greatest hockey player ever? 

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Coach Corbin: 

Yes. Greatest ever. 

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Me:

So better than Gretzky?

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Coach Corbin: 

I think so, because he did it in a time where, for that type of player and that style of play, it was revolutionary. That style just didn’t exist.

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Me:

Good point.

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Coach Corbin: 

In my mind, Gretzky was great, of course, but he’s No. 2. Bobby Orr was No. 1. There will never be anyone like him again. To me, you see great talents in the game these days and everything, but he just did it in a time that was much different. 

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Me: 

I’ve noticed on your roster you have a lot  of guys from the Northeast on there, is that by design? 

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Coach Corbin: 

Well it mostly has to do with contacts that I have. I am familiar with that area and there’s also the fact that a kid that comes from that environment to a place like this can improve a lot. But more than that, we just try to grab all the best players from Tennessee, then we go and get kids from New England, the Midwest and other Northern areas. 

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Me:

With that in mind, what’s your recruiting philosophy? What kind of players do you go after?

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Coach Corbin: 

I like athletes. I like baseball players, but I also like football players, I like hockey players. I don’t mind somebody who just plays baseball, but if I had my druthers, I’d get a guy who has played several sports, because they’ve practiced at being an athlete. 

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Me: 

I know Vanderbilt isn’t exactly an inexpensive school, how tough is it to recruit there, even with the recent success and facilities?

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Coach Corbin: 

How we built the program is we sold the education of the school first. Based on the fact that there was something there AFTER baseball, when they turn my age. That was the appealing part. Then, after that you’ve got the city and then the facilities. And then we also promoted the development of our players, like Jeremy Sowers, Jensen Lewis, David Price, Pedro Alvarez and Ryan Flaherty, We’ve been fortunate that the players have developed properly and we sell that aspect of the program too. 

(He looks around Alex Box Stadium) 

Now, we haven’t won at this level yet, not at the national level. So that’s a step that we’re grasping for and I hope we get there.

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Me:

As far as taking over the program, did you feel a big turnaround was imminent? Was Vanderbilt one of those ’sleeping giants’ in college baseball?

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Coach Corbin: 

Eh, nowadays I don’t think anything is a sleeping giant anymore. Whether it’s Oklahoma, Tulane, TCU, what-have-you, they all have their positives, but I think I was just a guy that came in after another guy (Mewbourne) that set everything up. He built a facility and basically handed it off to me. That’s it. I was just the recipient of a nice situation and we took advantage of it. 

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Me:

Okay, then this is a loaded question you can answer anyway you want to, is this program better than Clemson’s right now?

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Coach Corbin: 

(pause) No, look… Clemson is a tremendous program.Tremendous. Jack (Leggett) has done an incredible job with keeping that program playing at the highest level since before he got there to today. But his is a different program. And to be honest, Jack is the reason that I am here right now. So it’s not a better program it’s just a different program. 

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Me:

Have you ever had the itch to go into coaching in pro ball?

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Coach Corbin: 

No. You know, I like innocence. I like 18-and-19 year old kids that are still open to listen. I don’t really like the money end of things in pro ball. I knew when I was at Presbyterian that I was either going to be a high school coach or I was going to try to coach at this level where kids have ultimate goals. 

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Me:

Now, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you at some point this season was because back in the fall, I made a mistake and forgot to add David Price to my list of best players of the 2000s and you brought it to my attention (editor’s note: this truly was a mistake, not a slight to Price, my bone-headedness somehow allowed me not to include him, even though I meant to in my pre-story notes). So how big of an idiot did you think I was when I accidently forgot to put him on there?

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Coach Corbin: 

Well you know, I know how immersed you must’ve gotten with a large number of kids, it could be easy to leave someone out. Not a big deal.

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Me:

Well thanks coach, but really, tell me about David Price. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to see him play in college, what kind of player was he?

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Coach Corbin: 

Ah man. He was one-in-a-million. One-of-a-kind. He really was. I’ve never been around a kid who was the ultimate teammate like he was. He had a genuine care for his teammates and the team. It’s just very unusual for a kid to be as gifted as he was to have this quality. I’ve never come across another kid like him. It was a real pleasure to coach him and I was really lucky to have him. 

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Me:

Do you think you’ll ever get another one like him in your time?

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Coach Corbin: 

Well you hope so. Sure. You always hope you find a kid that has tons of gratitude and is innocent enough to where he just enjoys the things that college baseball has to offer, the attitude, the every day effort it takes. Yeah, there’s someone out there like him, and as a coach you just hope you come across another one. The kid was different. Just different. 

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Me:

I was actually talking to coach Mainieri the other day and one of the things he mentioned to me was that he was so impressed with your team – how you lead the SEC in pitching and have a solid defense and some big bats – and he was saying it was weird to see that you guys were just 10-9 in the conference. Would you say the same thing?

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Coach Corbin: 

Yeah, but I look around and I say the same thing about LSU – they’re better than 11-and-10. And I say that about a lot of teams. It’s almost like major league baseball where everyone is so good in this conference, I just don’t think it matters. No matter how good your pitching is, no matter how good your hitting is, I just think someone’s gonna be better on a particular weekend and everyone’s gonna be close to .500, maybe a little bit above it, maybe a little bit below it. Those teams that used to stretch out to big leads in the standings like 10 or 15 years ago, those days are done. 

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Me:

Talk about your staff a little bit. With guys like Sonny Gray, Jack Armstrong and Russell Brewer, how good can they be? Can they be up there with some of the better staffs you’ve had in the past?

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Coach Corbin: 

Well I’m not ready to put the king’s chair underneath them right now, they’ve got a lot of potential, that’s for sure. But they’re a staff that is still young in a lot of ways. We’ve got an older bullpen but still a lot of youth. I just think that the best is in front of them. We’ve got a good staff but they’re going to be even better a month from now or a year from now.

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Me:

How good is your freshman Anthony Gomez? He’s hitting .445 right now, did you anticipate this kind of ability at all?

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Coach Corbin: 

No, I didn’t. Honestly. But he has a competitive side and he loves to play and he doesn’t feel any pressure. From that stand point I love the way he goes about things. He’s one of those kids that says ‘I don’t care what the competition is or what kind of stuff he’s got, this game is simple: see ball, hit it.’ That’s just the way he is. 

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Me:

Okay, heading into the stretch run, what would you like to see from your team from this point on in order to make a run in the post-season?

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Coach Corbin: 

Continue to grow. We haven’t reached our offensive potential yet, but that’s just around the corner. I look at our lineup and I don’t think we’ve got any black holes in the lineup like we’ve had in years past. I think we’re better than what we’ve been up to this point. I just want to see us reach our potential in the next three or four weeks and I think we can. 

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Me: 

What would getting to Omaha mean to you?

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Coach Corbin: 

You know, I get goosebumps when I think about it. It would mean everything to me just to see these kids celebrate getting there and then to be in that ballpark.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Coach Godwin is an “Everyman” type of personality with a hard-work mentality about him. I hope you dig the interview here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Coach Penders has had a lot to smile about in his 5-2 start.

Today was a historic day for the Huskies athletic department. What’s that?… Oh, no, no, no, not for that boring girls basketball win-streak thingee either. With 71 games in a row? Or as I like to say, 71 straight dunk-free basketball games… no thank you.

Nope, today was much more important than that for Connecticut athletics. It was the baseball teams’ chance to get a four-game sweep at Cal State Northridge.

I also got the chance to talk to UConn head coach Jim Penders after his Huskies came up just short in getting that sweep. But it should be noted that they showed signs of life for a much, much, much better season in 2010.

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WHAT I SAW AT MATADOR FIELD TODAY
CSUN avoided the sweep from the visiting Connecticut Huskies with a white-knuckle 5-3 win. With the result, UConn drops to 5-2 on the young season and the Matadors improved to 5-5, as they look to turn their season into a weakened Big West success.

UConn – 001 010 100 – 3 10 1
CSUN – 000 004 100 – 5 8 1

WP: Justen Gorski (2-0)
LP: Pat Butler (0-1)
Save: Jimmy Joicoeur (1)

CSUN saves specialist Jimmy Jolicoeur gets a handshake from catcher hero Marty Bowen after escaping a 9th inning jam for the win.

The Matadors needed this one, and they got it. A four-run 6th inning and some timely relief work on the mound were the big keys in avoiding the four-game sweep at the hands of the Huskies from the Northeast.

Three straight infield singles, two via bunts, kick-started the key bottom of the 6th, and Marty Bowen’s 2-RBI single sealed the fate of the Huskies, putting Northridge up 3-2, a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. Bowen also came back in the 7th to put a cement headstone on the UConn sweeping hopes with another single that scored an insurance run for the Mats.

But UConn wouldn’t go quietly… no, not one iota. The Huskies ended up loading the bases in the 9th with just one out. But CSUN ace bullpenner Jimmy Jolicoeur came on to get a pair of strikeouts from UConn’s most dangerous hitters, George Springer and Mike Olt. Nice work.

Getting George Springer to strike out looking with the bases loaded in the 9th was huge.

Still, with a 3-1 weekend in the valley, this was a solid indicator that the Huskies may be ready to make a huge “you better fuggin’ watch out!” season in Big East play. And who knows, maybe even in NCAA tournament play too.

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MY Q&A WITH COACH PENDERS.
After the game, I was able to catch up with the Connecticut head honcho and talk turkey about his teams’ 5-2 mark and his hopes of avoiding last season’s squalid 7-11 start. That led to the team finishing with a 36-24 mark and an RPI of 72. I.e., the Huskies sat at home in June, instead of playing in the biggest ball.

Here’s how things went down…

Me:
Hey coach, I’m Eric Sorenson from College Baseball Today.

Coach Penders:
Yeah, I recognize you from the website. I thought I’d see you with stitches in your head though.

Me:
I know, I got them fixed. This IS a plastic surgery town.

Coach Penders:
(Laughs) Well that’s good.

Me:
For a while there I thought I might catch you after a sweep.

Coach Penders:
Yeah, well, we couldn’t finish today.

Me:
Just a couple questions before you guys take off. Talk a little bit about your teams’ start this year as opposed to last year when you had some early struggles. What’s been the difference?

Coach Penders:
Well we made a couple of adjustments in how we prepared for the season. We really laid off a lot on the conditioning. I made a deal with our guys and they came back in pre-season already in shape after the holiday break. And I really think a lot of our slow starts had more to do with what WE were doing as a coaching staff.

Me:
You mean over the last few years?

Coach Penders:
Yeah. We changed some things up conditioning-wise and their legs have looked fresher and have had a lot more energy.

And also, I’m really pleased with our swagger. The dugout has got a lot of energy – as I’m sure you heard today – and I like our attitude. I mean, you have a guy like (Friday ace) Elliot Glynn who was the No. 1 pitcher for Wilson High School in Long Beach (California), who was the No. 1-ranked high school team in the country, he’s not afraid of anybody. You know, maybe he SHOULD be afraid – he doesn’t have a 95-mile per hour fastball or anything – but he’s pitched in Dodger Stadium for the sectionals and he’s been a Cape Cod League All Star, he’s our Friday night starter. And he has a lot of confidence and that really sets the tone for our ball club.

Me:
I was going to ask you about the depth of your team, especially pitching-wise. How do you assess that part of the team?

Coach Penders:
Going into the beginning of the year we were very concerned about the staff and the depth of the staff. But so far the numbers are shaking out pretty well. So far, so good. We’ve done a pretty good job of throwing strikes. For the most part I’ve been happy with our pitchers.

Me:
Do you expect there to be a lot of younger guys at the back end of the bullpen and mid-week starts?

Coach Penders:
Yeah, that’s probably so. You know, today, we had a freshman, Pat Butler, get the start and he may have battled a little case of nerves for a few innings as a freshman in his first outing.

Coach Jim Penders says that SS Nick Ahmed could have the best arm on the team, having hit a consistent 90-to-93 mph on the radars.

Me:
I thought he did pretty well up until that 6th inning.

Coach Penders:
Yeah, he settled in okay. He’s really got a good arm. I think he should take a lot of positives out of that start. And you know, the guy that might throw the best of any of them is our shortstop, Nick Ahmed. He can run it up there around 92 to 94, and we had him getting loose between innings late in the game because he might’ve had to come in and close it out, especially if we could’ve gotten another run or two and sent this game into extra innings.

Me:
Now, you guys came pretty close last year to making the NCAA tournament, or at least to getting into consideration with an RPI in the low 70s. Have you adjusted anything, schedule-wise or maybe what you were saying about conditioning, laying off the guys a little bit so you can make a better late season push?

Coach Penders:
Ehhh, I don’t know if we can do anything RPI-wise up there in the Northeast. I mean, when Rhode Island doesn’t get into the tournament last year… I don’t know what else you have to do. They beat Oklahoma State, they beat Miami. They beat all these good teams and Jimmy Foster (the URI head coach) and his guys deserved to be in the regionals last year.

Me:
Yeah, that was sad… don’t get me started.

Coach Penders:
So I don’t really focus on scheduling a whole lot. We tried that for a while, trying to get the biggest RPI we could get. But still, I think we’re playing the toughest schedule in the history of the program this year. We feel as if we can compete with anybody.

Me:
Speaking of, tell me what you think about the Big East. You guys had a great opening weekend over the Big 10 and you also have powerful teams like Louisville, St. John’s and even Villanova is something like 9-2 right now… tell me your thoughts on the conference.

Coach Penders:
We’ve always felt like we’ve been underrated for a long time. You know, my buddy Paul Mainieri (the LSU coach) is always preaching about how underrated we are and that’s just the nature of the beast.

The conference is really strong – and I mean top-to-bottom. I mean you brought up Villanova and they’re a very good offensive club, they can swing the bats and they’ve got like five guys hitting .350 or better.

Me:
I like that Matt Szczur guy, was the MVP of the national championship football team.

Coach Penders:
Oh yeah, he’s a very good player. And then Louisville’s going to be good. And we open the conference schedule with them out there and then go to West Virginia, and they’ve got some guys that can hit like crazy. I know South Florida has hit some bumps early, but they’ve played a really tough schedule.

Me:
So I’m assuming you mean this will be a two-or-three bid league this season?

Coach Penders:
(giving me that “well DUH!” look on his face). I sure hope so, yes. The year we won 39 games – in 2006 – we didn’t get in either. And St. John’s had 40 wins that year and us two were the only schools with 39 or more wins that didn’t get into the NCAA tournament.

All we can do for ourselves is keep winning, and that’s what I’ve told our guys. You know, if we win our next four games against USC, Tennessee, Marshall and Ohio State, I think that’s a good way to set the tone for the remainder of the season.

Coach Smith knew starting off at San Diego would be tough.

And I got the feeling after catching up with Coach Smith that he knows this will be a year of growth for his program. And that growth has to start small. But just like Bill Murray says in the movie Stripes, it is the little acorn that grows into the mighty oak.

(Right before he slumps to the floor and says, “… and then, depression set in.”)

So there is a ray of light squeaking its way through to the optimistic Smith. The hope is that last year’s successful ending will make the yearlings on this year’s team even more motivated and speed-up that process. Anything beats last year’s odd season where they slogged their way from pillar to post, playing near-.500 ball most of the regular season, only to see them get hot at the right time.

And like the mighty oak, it’s a process of program-building that will reap its benefits far down the line. Just know that it’s still on its way. Just wait.

So here’s our back-and-forth from Friday.

Blake Monar will be the staff ace and is a high-round draftee-to-be.

Me:
You guys are obviously missing some big name pitchers from last year in Eric Arnett and Matt Bashore. What do you think is gonna happen to your staff for this year?

Coach Smith:
Well, we know it’s gonna be tough because, I don’t know if we’ve talked about it before, but in the Big 10 we’re not allowed to over-sign the number of players. So when you’re looking at losing that caliber of a player, in addition to the other guys we lost. It’s hard to replace that for us. So, you know, I’d be lying to you if I said I feel real confident about our staff at this point. It’s going to be a real concern going into the season and how we replace those guys.

We’re gonna patch it up this year, and we also went out and signed a good group of players for 2010. For us, that’s just playing within the rules and not being allowed to over-sign.

Me:
I think I talked with (Michigan head coach) Rich Maloney about that last year.

Josh Lyon is a menacing presence at catcher.

Coach Smith:
Yes, I remember Rich DID talk about that.

Me:
Yeah, I thought that did ring a bell. Talk also about the loss of your stud catcher Josh Phegley and what he meant to the team. Who is going to replace his leadership?

Coach Smith:
Well you’re talking about a guy that is still hanging around Bloomington and working out and is going to go to a big league spring training camp a year out of college. To replace that is nearly impossible. But you know, Josh Lyon (the new catcher) is a very capable guy. We feel he’s gonna be a great prospect-caliber type of player too, he just needs a lot of reps. He’s a big left-handed hitter and his deal for us is ‘How is he going to handle our staff?’ because Phegley did that so well. He was a coach, a leader and a baseball guy on the field. Ability-wise, he’s great. We’ve just gotta see if he comes together on the other stuff.

Me:
Going into last year, you guys had high expectations, picked by Baseball America to win the Big 10 and everything. Did you have a feeling of frustration as the season went along and you guys weren’t playing up to that expectation until the end of the year?

Coach Smith:
(Laughs) Frustration?… That’s putting it mildly. We were 10-to-12 games in and I’m scratching my head, wondering “What in the world is going on? I KNOW we’re better than this.” You know, I think once the guys just settled in and stopped playing for the papers and the rankings and all that stuff, it took care of itself. I mean, we were 1-and-7 in Matt Bashore’s first eight starts. And if you would’ve said that to me before the season, I would’ve said, “Impossible.”

Me:
Wow, that’s awful.

Coach Smith:
But it’s a totally different feel this year, we saw some rankings had us listed 8th in the Big 10 and the highest I’ve seen is at 5th or 6th. But I don’t really have a gauge on this team because we have so many new guys and we haven’t been able to get on the diamond yet.

Me:
So no outdoor practices this pre-season?

Coach Smith getting doused after winning the Big 10 title last May.

Coach Smith:
No, in fact, we were fortunate enough to get here an hour early today so that we could take our first ground balls since October. And that’s just the reality we deal with in the north. And we’re not gonna use that as an excuse either. I mean, sure, we’re down here to win, but we’re also trying to figure out what we have.

Me:
After I saw you guys in the Big 10 tournament, I came out and said you guys “could be another Fresno State.”

Coach Smith:
Yeah-heh… I remember that.

Me:
Lemme guess, you wanna kick my ass now, right?

Coach Smith:
(Laughing) No. No.

Me:
Well then you guys went on to Louisville for the Regionals and didn’t play very well. How disappointing was that?

Coach Smith:
It was very disappointing. In all honesty, I think you look at this program… there has NOT been a lot of winning at Indiana. It’s been like “Hey, let’s get to the Big 10 tournament.” Okay, we did that. Then it’s “Let’s get to the NCAA Tournament.” Okay, we did that. So when we got there, I think it was like we all said, “Okay… we made it.” (gives indication of total body relaxation pose).

I was really disappointed in how we played and how we competed, because we’ve gotta continue to make those steps. Still, I think it’s just the growth of a program, ya’ know? The maturation process.

Me:
Well that leads me to the next question… I had seen you guys play when you were in the Regionals in Austin while you were the head coach at Miami of Ohio. And then wasn’t it the next season you took over at Indiana?

Coach Smith:
Yeah, just after the NCAA tournament I took the job here.

Me:
I had been to a game at Miami and saw that fairly new stadium and the nice facilities you’ve got there. So I kept thinking to myself, “Why would coach Smith want to go from Miami to Indiana?” It almost seemed like a lateral move. But now, I think I’m finally starting to come around to what you were thinking with that move.

Coach Smith:
Yeah. Yeah. I went to school at Miami, so this is obviously no slight against my school. I just said to myself, “You know what, this is the Big 10 conference – and I was at Indiana in 1996 when they won the Big 10 championship – I know we can win here. It’s been done before.” So I wanted to go to a place where I knew we could get bigger and better than what we were doing at Miami of Ohio. Again, it’s no slight against Miami – and I don’t want to make this a negative in any way whatsoever. I just felt in some ways we had done all we can at Miami. And it had more to do with the fact of where we were conference-wise, we (at the Mid-American Conference) were a single-bid league every year, regardless. One year, Ball State had Bullington as a first-rounder and was in the Top 20, but didn’t win the MAC tournament so they didn’t get an NCAA bid. And I always kept that in the back of my mind. So I wanted to go to a place where, if you did well in the regular season, you were still going to have a chance at an at-large bid.

Me:
Talk a little bit about the growth of the Big 10. Because one of the reasons I went to the Big 10 tournament last year was because I thought the teams at the top of the standings were really good. Talk about that and all the new facilities being built almost conference-wide.

Coach Smith:
Well that’s what Coach Hill and I just talked about, it’s become such an arms race now. You’ve gotta keep up everybody else. And I think it elevates the caliber of baseball that’s being played there. So we had to do something. Everybody in our league was doing that and in our case we had to improve our facilities so that we wouldn’t get left behind. So it certainly helps.

Me:
Let’s finally get to this year’s team, what is going to be your strengths and your weaknesses?

Coach Smith:
Well, keep in mind it may not play out today since we haven’t been outside yet, but I think eventually we’re going to be pretty good defensively. We’ve got a chance to be, that is. Offensively, we’ve got some capable guys, but they just need to get more at-bats because they’ve sat behind a pretty talented group the last couple years. We’re going to have some guys that will make people say, “Hey, where’s this guy been?” Obviously, we’re going to build around Jerrud Sabourin and Alex Dickerson. Both of those guys have been to the wars. And I believe Dickerson is one of the better hitters in the country, really. So I don’t think we’ll be a slouch on offense.

Our biggest concern is going to be in the mound. We’ve got Blake Monar back (a weekend starter), and he’s a sophomore-eligible guy, so we’re likely only going to have him one more year. But beyond him, that’s a big concern – and you’ll probably see it out there today. So to answer your question finally, yes, it’s the pitching. (Laughs)

Me:
Bullpan-wise, how deep do you think you guys are? Is this going to be a work in progress?

Coach Smith:
Probably so, yes. I mean, we’ve got some capable guys out there, but we just don’t have the depth. You’ll see Matt Ernest, who we got off the football team. You know, he hasn’t picked up a baseball in two and a half years, and he’s probably going to be one of the better guys we’ll have coming out of the bullpen out there. Chris Squires is back and he’s a guy that will have a chance to be an All-Big 10 type of player.

Me:
Yeah, I remember him pitching the last few innings of the championship game there at the Big 10 tournament.

Coach Smith:
Yeah, yeah. We like that he’s back there to close because it gives us a legitimate chance to shut people down. But again, beyond that we just don’t have the depth, because of the draft.

Me:
Well coach, good luck with everything. I don’t quite know how to put this, but I hope you don’t get killed out there this weekend.

Coach Smith:
We’ll be okay, it’s no problem. And don’t worry, you’re not a jinx or anything.

Sure enough, Sunday rolled around and wouldn’t you know it, Indiana beat the No. 23-ranked Toreros 7-5. Maybe things are turning around for IU already.

Minnesota State, the 2009 Northern Sun champs

What if Division II ruled the world?

If D-2 baseball ruled the world, we’d have to get used to three indelible truths…
1- There would never be more than one team per conference in the College World Series.
2- The term “student-athlete” would actually be revered by the NCAA. And…
3- The Minnesota Twins would still be idiots for building a stadium without at least a retractable roof.

I had the chance to talk to second-year Minnesota State baseball coach Matt Magers on Thursday in an attempt to further my understanding of Division II baseball. Coach Magers is coming off a 38-17 season which saw his Mavericks win the Northern Sun Conference and advance to the NCAA Division II regionals last May. But it was the everyday conditions of D-2 baseball that made this conversation an eye-opener.

Imagine a college baseball world where you can start practicing when classes begin after the new year and being able to play your first games on February 1st. Yes, that’s the luxury of D-2. The downside? Even less scholarships. You think 11.7 is weak? Try to go out on a recruiting trip with only three scholarships in your pocket. And from a fan perspective, just think how frustrating it would be to have the regular season end on the first weekend in May? That’s worse than the Ivy League’s mandated end date.

So Division II is definitely a world of good, but is liberally spiced with a lot of bad too.

Minnesota State is used to both the goods and the bads as a fact of life. I started the conversation with Coach Magers by asking him about his feelings of the Metrodome and the reliance on it by teams in his region.

“There are positives and negatives about it,” said Magers. “But NAIA, JCs, D-2s and D-3s in the region all use the facility. From February 4th to April 6th there are games there every day from 9:30am to 1am.”

But there are a number of prices to pay for using the Twins former home.

“It costs 1,250 dollars for a double-header for each team. You don’t get to use the scoreboard and they only use about half the lights as they normally do for Twins games, so they can save some money.” Coach Magers says with a laugh. “And the thing is, you get four and a half hours to complete two games in a double-header. But if you don’t get a complete game in, the NCAA doesn’t count that game. So you could be up 10-1 in the 5th inning, but if your time limit is up, it’s as if the game never happened.”

So it’s certainly no barrel of monkeys to play a game at the Metrodome. But then again, in this world of doing what you can to get games in for the sake of college baseball, you take what you can get. But my next question was, “What about when the Vikings finally get their own stadium and the downtown Baggiedome gets razed?”

“Well because of the success the Vikings had this season, there is a lot of talk that they were hoping to parlay that into a new stadium. But I’m not sure where it’s at right now. I do know that with the state of the economy in Minnesota and in general, people don’t want to even talk about a new stadium.” He explained.

“Besides, the Metrodome gets used a lot. They have boat shows, wrestling events, motocrosses and trade shows – so they’re making a lot of money from it year-round.”

At that point I admitted to Coach Magers that I was pretty ignorant of the state of Division II baseball, since most of my focus is on Division I, except for the occasional D-2 game I catch – like I did when I went to last weekend’s Western Oregon-UC San Diego game. Here was our back-and-forth on D-2 ball.

Me:
In Division I, as an example, the Big 10 hasn’t been to Omaha since 1984 and the teams in the south and west have dominated. Is there a disparity in Division II between the north and south?

Coach Magers:
I don’t think so. The way Division II is aligned, it doesn’t really matter. Division II is a life in balance. We’re all divided into eight regions and those eight advance to the national finals. We’re in the Central Region, which has our conference, the Northern Sun, and the Rocky Mountain Conference in there.

Me:
Wait. So because of this regionalization of the regionals, that means that two teams from the same conference couldn’t make the Final 8?

Coach Matt Magers is in his second year at MSU.

Coach Magers:
That’s correct.

Me:
Do you know how crazy that sounds to a Division I fan like me?

Coach Magers:
(laughing) Yes I do.

Me:
I mean, the SEC usually has two or three teams in Omaha. If you told people in Division I that only one team from the SEC was able to make it to Omaha, you wouldn’t be able to stop the bitching!

Coach Magers:
I know.

Me:
Isn’t there any outcry because people think the southern and western teams are better?

Coach Magers:
No, not really. In fact, Emporia State (from Kansas) was the runner-up and Central Missouri has won a couple of titles in recent years and both of those programs were in our region up until they switched them around last year. And also, Division III sets up their regions the same way and St. Thomas (from St. Paul, Minnesota) won the national title last year and Wisconsin-Whitewater won the national title in 2008. So it’s not like the northern teams are outmanned. Cold-weather teams have won their share.

After that, I was curious about the scholarship issue – which is really a hot-button topic in Division I. He told me that was where some schools have a slight advantage. The sport isn’t rich, not by any stretch. The 11.7 would be a luxury in D2. The most a freebies that the Division II schools have to dole out is just nine scholarships – and some deal with even less.

“In Division II, there are a number of schools that have nine scholarships to give: like the Tampas, the Abilene Christians, the Central Missouris, the Emporia States. But there are a lot of programs that will only have six to give out, especially those schools that have football. At MSU, we’ve only got three scholarships to give. That’s because we have the disadvantage of having football AND a lot of other athletic teams to support. Since we have 21 varsity sports, we have to spread out the scholarships even more.”

Talk about getting blood from a turnip.

Coach Magers shrugged it off with, “We have to rely on our baseball program’s tradition a lot when we go out recruiting.”

And that can be a good thing, since Coach Magers proudly pointed out to me that MSU has the second-most NCAA tournament appearances in all Division II. But that also led me to my final question about baseball in D-2, since the season ends so early, wouldn’t he like to see the NCAA tournament start a little later, like late May, so that his team can host more home games in the regular season?

“Well, there hasn’t been any talk of that. In fact, the NCAA has mandated that we shorten our regular season from 56 to 50 games beginning next year.”

Considering the amount of uproar that is heard in D-1 over the mere mention of taking four regular season games, it made me wonder why.

“The NCAA decided a few years ago that D-2 should be more balanced between athletics and academics, so they cut down on sports across the board.” Magers explained. “All sports are affected. They’ve put a limit on pre-season practices for football, they’ve reduced the number of games in volleyball and basketball by two or three games. They really wanted to emphasize the student in student-athlete at our level.”

Hmmm. Let’s see… in D-1 we’ve had classroom-draining conference tournaments in numerous sports, a 12th game added for football and talk of an expanded March Madness field. Ya’ know, we really should refer to the players in Division I major sports as “Athlete-Students.”

(The eight “districts” as they appeared in the 1973 CWS program.)

Yes, quoting the Rage Against The Machine song, these guys are going to be an even stronger force in college baseball this season than they were last year when they finished a game away from Omaha. And Coach Jim Schlossnagle knows it.

Umps be damned, 2010 will be a good year for Jim Schlossnagle.

While in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to cover the Big 12 title game at Cowboys Stadium this past weekend, I took a quick side trek to the home of the school that should be playing for the national championship in football and talked with the man that hopes to emulate the pigskin success on the baseball diamond this coming spring.

So I stepped into Coach Schlossnage’s office/permanent luxury suite overlooking the field in the relatively new Lupton Stadium, a sparkling facility in the renaissance boom that is college baseball. Even on this battleship gray, 38-degree afternoon, the place looks immaculate. And I also got the sense that Coach Schlossnagle was pretty fired up about all the contagious success of the athletic programs from every corner of the TCU campus.

Me:
To get things started, lets get the subject of TCU football out of the way first. What do you feel about the season they had and where they’re going for their bowl game?

Coach Schlossnagle:
It’s really been phenomenal. Gary Patterson and I are close friends and I think it’s good to see hard work rewarded. And it’s campus-wide too. We have 20 sports and 16 of them went on to NCAA post-season play last school year. For a school this size to have that kind of success, it’s pretty phenomenal. And we were one of only three schools to have a team in the top 10 in football and a baseball team in the Super Regionals; Texas, Florida and TCU.

Me:
Well tell me how you feel about the bowl game… as a fan.

Coach Schlossnagle:
As a fan? Well, I’m disappointed, of course. I know I’m looking through purple-tinted glasses, but I get to see these guys play ever week and well… they’re pretty good. I would’ve liked to have seen us get the chance to further crack that perception against whoever. I mean, I think they deserve to play for the national championship.

Me:
Well, I may be looking at things through red-colored lenses, but I worked that Big 12 title game on Saturday night and I kept thinking, “You know, Texas is talented beyond belief, but they’re just not playing very well.” And it seemed like they were like that all year. I left that stadium Saturday night thinking it was time we give a TCU a shot at the title ‘coz this team (Texas) didn’t deserve it.

Coach Schlossnagle:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I know that Coach Patterson is kind of on the fence about a playoff over having bowl games, but I can’t think of any legitimate, concrete reason anybody could be against it. They always bring up academics, but it’s amazing that baseball players can play straight through exams week but football players apparently can’t. I know some people like that whole bowl experience and whatnot, but it’s the competitor in me that would want to play for the national title in a playoff.

Me:
You’re preachin’ to the choir here coach, so don’t get me started on that… let’s get to some baseball stuff.

Coach Schlossnagle:
Good.

Me:
Let’s talk about the 800-pound gorilla in the room… your phenom pitcher Matt Purke, coming to TCU after getting drafted in the 1st round of the MLB draft. Obviously, there’s been a lot written about him. But I’d like to know, how did you pull that off? How did you get him to come to TCU to begin with?

Coach Schlossnagle:
What’s amazing about it is, when you recruit at a high-level – a Division I level – you always keep the draft in mind. We have a complete sales pitch/presentation-type of thing to send to recruits in which we try to just sell college baseball. We’re not trying to put down professional baseball…

Me:
So you’re just selling the experience of college and all that?

Coach Schlossnagle:
Yeah. Yeah. A little thing they watch that says ‘This is why you should come to college’. But with Purke we didn’t even do any of that. His family had done a lot of research and they knew the value of going to school, but they were still gonna let the draft dictate what happened. Basically, what it came down to was we just said, “Hey Matt, you know how we feel about you at TCU. We certainly understand where you stand in the draft, but if this is what you decide to do, you know you’re going to be well taken-care of at TCU.” And beyond that, we really had no conversation with him.

Me:
Really? Nothing more?

Coach Schlossnagle:
Well, we knew it was going to come down to the final hour – as they all do. Matt and his family were incredibly up-front in the fact that he’ll sign for THIS set amount and not a penny less. And I can’t speak for the Rangers situation but that’s what happened.

Me:
They didn’t come through.

Coach Schlossnagle:
That’s right. We were a little anxious ‘coz we thought “wow, this guy might actually come to school!” And he was actually here for the last day of orientation on August 17th, ‘coz you have to go through orientation to go to school here. So the final 24 hours of negotiating with the Rangers actually happened on campus here and in a hotel room.

Me:
Great. But weren’t you a little nervous about it all?

Coach Schlossnagle:
It really wasn’t much of a “nervous” thing. Usually we get kids that are drafted in the 7th or 8th round and are getting signing bonuses of 500 to 600-thousand dollars and some of those are the ones we think it would really be a better decision to come to school. Those are the ones that we are always really sweating over. But with a kid like Matt that is drafted THAT high, I mean, how do you try to talk a kid out of $2.5 to $6 million dollars? I don’t really have an argument against a kid turning down that kind of money.

Me:
But beyond Matt, the rest of your recruiting class was really good. I think Baseball America had it ranked in the top five. Talk a little bit about that. I mean even if you didn’t get Purke to campus, you still had a lot of good players signed, right?

Coach Schlossnagle:
Yeah, we had 13 pitchers on last year’s team and we’ve got 12 of them coming back this year. So we knew we wanted to get some position players that could be impact players in the program. And we feel that Josh Elander, a catcher-slash-outfielder and a center fielder named Kyle Von Tungeln, we feel those two are legit Division I guys, even as freshmen. Those two guys along with a couple of junior college players that we think are really impact guys, and for what we needed, with losing four or five every day players off of last year’s team, it will be nice to plug those guys in. Plus we had a couple of guys that we redshirted and didn’t get to play last year because we had so many seniors that we’re going to bring back.

Me:
So I was also going to ask you about your pitching staff. I was here at a game two seasons ago and saw Tyler Lockwood pitch a really good game against Air Force and I know he’s back again. Tell me about him and some of the other guys you have coming back like Paul Gerrish and Kyle Winkler.

Coach Schlossnagle:
The easiest way to put it is, if the season started today, there’s a good chance that Lockwood and Gerrish would probably start the season in some sort of bullpen role. And we’re talking about Lockwood, two years ago – if it weren’t for Strasburg – would’ve been the pitcher of the year in the Mountain West after going 9-2 with a great ERA and Gerrish, who ended up being our No. 1 starter at the end of last year and beat Texas in the Super Regionals. That’s two-thirds of our starters from last year’s team.

Me:
Geez. I guess that’s pretty good. (laughs)

Tyler Lockwood is part of a ridiculously deep TCU arms corps.

Coach Schlossnagle:
And the biggest highlight of the fall was a guy named Steven Maxwell, who is about 20 months removed from Tommy John surgery. I mean, he had flashes of brilliance here before. In 2008 he beat Fullerton. He beat Ole Miss. He had Pepperdine beat in the 9th, all that, but then he came down with Tommy John, so we had to shut him down.

Me:
But then he pitched a little last year, right?

Coach Schlossnagle:
He pitched here and there. I mean, he had 10 starts, but with Tommy John Surgery, even if you’re back in a year, it’s really not until your second year that you catch your stride again. And Maxwell’s fall work was off the charts. Just off the charts. I mean, he’s a 4th year junior, but right now he looks like a 3rd or 4th round draft pick to be honest with you. And with Winkler, you know, he’s the guy that started in the Super Regionals and beat Oregon State in the regionals and he was a really highly-touted freshman. So we’re in pretty good shape.

Me:
Understatement.

Coach Schlossnagle:
Right now, the starting rotation would be some kind of combination of Maxwell, Purke and Winkler. And then, we also had a kid named Greg Holle, a big 6′7″ kid who is a junior now but he had 14 starts as a freshman and eight or nine more last year. And he’s really a better starter than reliever to be honest.

Me:
Man… what are you gonna do with all these arms coach? There’s only one ball.

Coach Schlossnagle:
Yeah, well we’ve got a lot of guys back and a lot of options. We also have a couple of guys that pitched well as freshmen in Kaleb Merck and Erik Miller and of course, Eric Marshall was our closer with nine saves last year and he’s back as a fifth year senior and 23-year old guy. So I love our pitching.

Me:
I think I would refer to that as an embarrassment of riches. (laughs).

Coach Schlossnagle:
Now we just gotta catch it behind them. (rolls the eyes)

Me:
Well I know that last year when I saw you guys play at San Diego State against Strasburg, the player I was most impressed with was your catcher Bryan Holaday. I didn’t know a lot about him before that, but just watching him work that game and his hustle and all, it was really cool to see.

Coach Schlossnagle:
To me, getting Purke was big. Getting Elender and Von Tungeln was big. But the best news was getting Holaday back for his senior year. I mean, he’s the captain of our team and, I tell you what, I’ve been in coaching for 19 years including a summer with Team USA, and he’s the best defensive catcher that I’ve ever been around. And I really think he’s the best in college baseball. If you look at our opponents’ stolen base numbers last year, he threw out well over 50 percent, he managed our team, he’s a leader and also hit 10 home runs.

Me:
One of which was off of Strasburg from that game in San Diego.

Coach Schlossnagle:
He had some teams contact him in the 7th to 10th round last June, asking if he would be willing to sign, but he didn’t. And that’s one of the advantages of a private school is that if you have a kid that is a good student, it’s not easy to sign him for 50-to-60 thousand bucks. So having him come back was huge ‘coz he’s such a leader and handles our pitching staff so well. And Tony Gwynne says he’s his favorite college player.

Bryan Holaday could be the best catcher in the country in 2010.

Me:
Really?

Coach Schlossnagle:
Yeah, he plays so hard and he just epitomizes the way we want to play on our team. And we’re really gonna count on him and Tyler Featherston, our shortstop and Jason Coats and Matt Curry. They’ll have to carry us early on ‘coz they’re our most experienced guys back there.

Me:
And I assume Featherston is going to be your ringleader in the infield, right?

Coach Schlossnagle:
Yeah, he’s our leader there, going from second to short this year. And he really did not play well defensively in the first half of last year, I think he committed 18 errors in our first 24 games. But then he only had seven or eight in the last 34 and then he had a great summer in the New England Collegiate League. And he’s a guy that is pretty vocal and has a big personality, so we’re really gonna count on him offensively and defensively to solidify our infield.

Me:
So you’re going to have to rely on a lot of young guys this year.

Coach Schlossnagle:
Yeah, if we started the season today we’d probably start two redshirt freshmen, Jantzen Witte and Davy Wright, and then the two true freshmen I talked about in Elander and Von Tungeln. And we’d also have a j.c. guy at second in Jerome Pena, who was drafted in the 40th round last year. So we’ll probably have three or four freshman playing everyday and some other new guys too.

Me:
I wanted to touch a little bit on your coaching staff too. I know you had Randy Mazey come here after being the head coach at East Carolina and your associate head coach Todd Whitting just got that promotion a few years ago. Talk a little bit about them.

Coach Schlossnagle:
Well, with Whitting, he’s our top assistant and our recruiting coordinator, and when I was offered this job I told them I wanted the job but I wouldn’t take it without getting the resources to hire Todd Whitting. He was at Houston and he was their recruiting coordinator and at the time they had been to the Super Regionals in three out of four years. And in this state, 80% of the players on these teams are from Texas. So you really need somebody on your staff who has the relationships and knows how to work them. And when I was at Tulane and UNLV, I recruited this state hard and, to me, he was the best guy and we were able to get him. So in the last few years we’ve had four recruiting classes ranked in the top 25 with two of them in the top 10. And not only that, but he’s the best infield instructor I’ve ever been around and a great hitting instructor. I think he’s definitely a head coach in waiting. He can take his time and find the right job for himself.

And then Randy Mazey, when I was a volunteer coach back at Clemson, he was a restricted earnings coach and we were roommates in 1992-93. So we’ve known each other a long time and he is one of the top one or two best purely-baseball people that I’ve ever met. Just to let you know, I’m a pitching guy, and Randy is the only guy in the country that I would allow to handle my pitchers instead of me. He was a two-way player in pro ball, an outfielder-pitcher. So he’s got a great feel for all parts of the game. He was the Conference USA coach of the year one year at ECU and when he was at Charleston Southern, he led that school to its first NCAA tournament appearance in any sport.

So I’ve got what I consider to be two super-star coaches.

Me:
Well that brings up two things. One, is Raynor Noble pissed at you for hiring coach Whitting away from him?

Coach Schlossnagle:
(chuckling) Well, you know, I don’t think he is. But he did try to hire him back since then.

Me:
Secondly, I guess you’re going to have to assume you’re gonna lose these guys eventually, right? Maybe even soon?

Coach Schlossnagle:
Yeah. Yeah. No question. But you know, that’s what you want. At least that’s what I want, I want upwardly mobile guys that want to go sign great classes. So it helps the program and helps them advance too. You want guys that want to coach the pitchers to finish in the top five ERAs in the country so that can help them get the next job. I’m fine with that. I want what they want. But that’s the one thing about TCU is that it’s a special place. People want to stay here because of the lifestyle. So as much as I want them to leave, TCU administration and the lifestyle make it become a hard decision.

Me:
I’m assuming you’re really happy with what they’ve done here at TCU with the facilities, especially this stadium and all. You’ve gotta be happy with the commitment they’ve made.

Coach Schlossnagle:
Absolutely. The best piece of advice I ever got was from Kevin White, who is now the A.D. at Duke, but was at Arizona State and Notre Dame before that. He told me that if you’re working with an administration that wants the same thing that you do, always try to make the job you want to be the job you have. And that’s what’s been phenomenal about when I came here. I inherited the ballpark, but every year since I’ve been here they’ve done something to make this place even better.

Me:
Yeah, I see they’re working on the outfield fence right now.

Coach Schlossnagle:
They’re just doing some maintenance on that right now. But before that we put up the new scoreboard and videoboard you see, and we did those four party patios before last season and they’re already sold out for this coming season. We got 400,000 dollars worth of new drainage for the field. A new warning track was installed when I first got here. Every year, it’s something new. And now we’ve hired Chris Del Conte from Rice, so you know he knows what a good baseball program can do for the athletic department. And it’s really that way in all our sports across the board. It’s great.

Me:
I wanted to touch on the post-season from last year. I assume the atmosphere here for the Regionals was great.

Coach Schlossnagle:
Oh yeah. It was.

Me:
But when the brackets came out and you saw that you guys were looking at a possible match-up with Texas, what went through your mind? Was it more of “uh-oh!” or “oh boy!”?

Coach Schlossnagle:
Well it was both actually. Ever since I’ve been here, if you’ve watched all the schools with more tradition than us, well, you’re probably gonna have to go through Texas, or Rice, or Baylor, or A&M to get to Omaha, that’s just how it works. And the same thing goes for California teams, any of them will have to go through Fullerton or Stanford or even Arizona State. They try to bunch everybody up everywhere, which I think is a travesty.

Me:
Don’t get me started coach.

Coach Schlossnagle:
So yeah, we had to go through the No. 1 national seed and I thought we had a chance at a national seed too. We were No. 6 or No. 7 in the RPI, so I thought we were deserving of a national seed too. Maybe if we had won our conference tournament we would’ve done that. So part of you is just knowing that it’s coming – you’re gonna have to go through Rice or Texas. But at the same time, if you could ever write a storybook post-season… (laughs). If you could ever draw it up and have TCU go to the College World Series for the first time, that’s the way you’d want to do it, beating Texas. You know, when I was at Tulane and we went to Omaha for the first time, we had to beat LSU in Skip Bertman’s last year. But you couldn’t draw it up any better. It was great.

Me:
I saw on your bio that you just signed a contract through 2016 not long ago. But if a program like Texas came calling or somebody like that, would you go? Or are you entrenched here forever? I mean I know you’re a young dude and all, so…

Coach Schlossnagle:
Me and Gary Patterson talk about this all the time. It seems if you’re successful at a program and are under 50, that subject always comes up. But it’s a compliment on the school and the program. You know, I guess you never say never, but baseball’s different than football because we have a tournament. Look at places like Rice or Wichita State or Fullerton or even Fresno, when they got hot. You can win national championships at those kind of schools. And I think here, as long as everybody else has the same goals about getting better and getting better, it makes it difficult to leave. I’ve had some opportunities that last two or three years, but it’s also the city.

Me:
Oh, the lifestyle thing you were talking about a little while ago.

Coach Schlossnagle:
Yeah. I mean, I literally live right at the end of this parking lot out back. I walk here. It’s like 200 yards.

Me:
Tough commute.

Coach Schlossnagle:
I know. And my children are in 3rd and 4th grade, so picking up and leaving would be difficult anyway. I mean, again, you never say never, but I’ve signed a seven year contract because I fully intend to be here – and that’s not just coach-speak, I really mean that.

Me:
So no interest in pro ball, coaching at that level?

Coach Schlossnagle:
No, I’m a college guy through and through.

Me:
Pfft. Then forget about it coach, that’s what I wanna hear. Tell you what, talk a little bit about the Mountain West, and what I mean is, it seems like things are slowly getting better, but I’ve always been a little frustrated by the fact that the facilities are so good, but the play hasn’t matched it yet. Last year seemed like a step in the right direction, getting three teams into the NCAA tournament.

Coach Schlossnagle:
Eric, I feel the same way as you. I’ve been in this league three or four years here and two at UNLV and I feel like our league has off-the-chart potential. You have three schools, TCU, San Diego State and UNLV that have facilities, weather and access to a recruiting base. And they’re able to play a really good schedule – and that’s a huge thing to me. In my opinion, those three schools should be the anchor teams to our league. And then you have BYU, who has a niche. They’ve got great facilities, they have plenty of resources financially and can recruit nationally. Then you’ve got two “University of’s” in New Mexico and Utah. I haven’t filled out my ranking yet but Utah is going to be in the top three somewhere this year. They’ve got a great team coming back. I think (Bill) Kinneberg is a great coach and so is Ray Birmingham at UNM. And Air Force is really the only one that is restricted by who they are and what they’re about and also the weather. So we’ve only got seven schools, but if the three I started with, TCU, San Diego State and UNLV are what they should be, that’s almost half of your league. I think our league is coming around, we went from 14 to seven in the RPI and at one point last year we had three teams in the top 25. But what you hope for is that the other teams in our league continue to be as committed as we are to the sport. I’m like you, I think we can be a top seven or eight conference every year.

Me:
I like to refer to it as a sleeping giant of a conference.

Coach Schlossnagle:
That’s exactly right.

Me:
Let’s talk for just a bit about Fullerton. I get to see them from time to time out there and I saw you’re playing them again this season. I know you beat them two of three last year to start the season. What did that weekend do for you guys and your confidence?

Coach Schlossnagle:
Well it was the first weekend of the season, so you just don’t know what you have really. We had a lot of new pitchers and didn’t have a closer. But when you play Fullerton, it’s the ultimate measuring stick because they play the game so well and are so well coached. When you finish playing Fullerton, you know exactly what your strengths are and exactly what your weaknesses are. They will be a threat to whatever weaknesses there are with your team. Even if you lose two or even lose all three, you come out of it saying, “Okay, these are the areas we need to work on.”

But the thing is, we were up 4-2 in the 7th in the game we lost. (Tyler) Pill ended up hitting a walk-off. We won on Saturday and then we were down 6-1 on Sunday and came back to win. And so when you have success like that against a team like Fullerton, it gives you so much confidence the rest of the year. You can hang your hat on, “Hey man, we just beat one of the most-storied programs in the country.” That doesn’t guarantee you anything, but it’s something you can build on. That’s why we try to play as good of a schedule as we can.

That’s why we’ve played Fullerton, Ole Miss, Wichita State and Minnesota – you may be surprised but Minnesota was as good of a team as any we played all last year. So those are the kinds of schedules we try to put together every year.

Me:
So that kind of schedule, that kind of competition, that’s a goal for you every year regardless of how good or bad you guys might be?

Coach Schlossnagle:
It is now, yeah. We originally went to playing tougher schedules because our league was struggling, so it was our only chance to put ourselves in position to get an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. But with last year, our league got really, really good, so it boosted our RPI into the top 10. But it wasn’t always that way for me. We didn’t play too good of a schedule at UNLV and we definitely didn’t play a very good schedule when I was at Tulane, because Conference USA was a pretty good league. But now I like it either way. Our kids like playing good teams. And when you’re trying to raise the number of season tickets and people are buying suites and those patio seats, they want to come out and see good games against good teams. And I can tell recruits, we may not play in the Big 12, but we’re playing all those teams like Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma… plus Fullerton, Ole Miss, Minnesota, etc.

Me:
Well that was about all I was going to ask today, but it seems to me like you can’t wait to get goin’ this year, especially with those arms you’ve got.

Coach Schlossnagle:
No doubt. I know our pitching is going to have to carry us until we get our younger position players brought up to speed. But I can’t wait.

Me:
Thanks for takin’ the time to have me here coach.

Coach Schlossnagle:
Thanks for makin’ it by. Travel safe.

.
SIDE NOTE:

Before we got to talking about his baseball team, coach Schlossnagle told me about being in the Frog Dome with all the fans and the band and the football team for the “live” shots during the BCS announcement show on Sunday night. Funny thing is, he told me that even though it looked live at the time of the show, most of it was actually pre-recorded about a half-hour before the show.

So the team is there, coach Gary Patterson is there, the Fox camera crew is there and Fox reporter Charissa Thompson is there. According to coach Schlossnagle, the producers were there pumping their fists and getting the crowd jazzed with applause signs and all. He said they didn’t know which bowl game they were going to play in at the beginning of the taping and even when it did go live, Thompson only told the fans gathered there that they were going to the Fiesta Bowl and not who they would play.

I kept wondering why these Frogs fans were so excited during the BCS selection show. Then I found out that they didn't know that they were headed to the Fiesta Bowl and playing Boise State.

Coach Patterson was finally told it would be against Boise State right before Thompson stuck a mic in his face.

It was when people started filing out of Daniel-Meyer Coliseum that the fans realized it was a rematch with Boise State that their Frogs got and not the chance to play a team like Florida. The crowd walked away disappointed. No chance to prove themselves against the snobby big-money players in the good ole boys network.