Coach's 5 Biggest Wins-Part One
4/21/2011 12:12:00 PM | Baseball
Head coach Mark Johnson has announced his retirement at the end of the 2011 Sam Houston baseball season. Coach Johnson will make his final appearance at Don Sanders Stadium as the Bearkats' skipper during the A&M-Corpus Christi series May 19-21.
GoBearkats.com will count down to Mark Johnson's retirement game with a weekly series of his five biggest wins for the Bearkats during his five-year tenure.
Today is biggest victory number 5:
SAM HOUSTON 8, UTSA 6 - Mark Johnson's 1000th win
Trailing late for the second game in a row, the Sam Houston State baseball team again rallied to pull out a victory against UTSA in the Southland Conference series finale in San Antonio on Sunday.
The Bearkats tied the game in the sixth inning and took the lead for good in the eighth. SHSU held on for an 8-6 victory, which gave the Bearkats a series sweep over UTSA.
With the win, SHSU head coach Mark Johnson earned his 1,000th career victory as a head coach.
Johnson, who coached for 21 years at Texas A&M and the past four at Sam Houston, has compiled a 1000-517-3 record.
Johnson picked up his first victory as a head coach when Texas A&M defeated Northeast Louisiana 10-1 on February 24, 1985.
He stands as the 14th active coach and the 44th all-time to win 1,000 games as a head coach at the NCAA Division I level.
"Winning 1,000 games was never something I set out to do when I got into coaching," Johnson said. "I wanted to win championships and go to Omaha (for the College World Series) and the 1,000 victories just happened. I have several very close friends who are in the group of coaches that have won 1,000 games, so its good to join them. I've been at it for a long time.
"In my tenure, I've been to two really good universities with outstanding facilities in an area where there's a lot of good baseball. I've had good assistants. I've also had good players. They're the ones who go out and win the games.
"My faith has been important in my career. You can have a lot of discouragement. It gave me a good perspective and a lot of perseverance over the years.
The Bearkats (6-3 in SLC, 11-13 overall) jumped on top of the Roadrunners with a three-run first inning. Sam Houston led until the bottom of the fifth when UTSA (1-8, 9-13) scored four runs to take a 6-4 advantage.
The Bearkats answered right back.
With runners on first and second base, catcher Doug Oney bunted along the third-base line. Roadrunners third baseman Ryan Dalton overthrew first base, which allowed Greg Olson to score and pull Sam Houston to within one. Center fielder Mark Hudson tied the game at 6 on a ground out to third base to score shortstop Ryan Mooney.
Second baseman Braeden Riley's RBI double and a run-scoring single by first baseman Taylor Davis gave Sam Houston a two-run lead in the eighth inning that the Bearkats never relinquished.
"This was a big weekend for us, going on the road and picking up a sweep," Johnson said.
"We're not getting any easy wins," Johnson said. "We've been able to persevere and battle. Games like this, we would've lost earlier in the season. We're maturing and we're a better ballclub than we were 22 games ago."
The Bearkats totaled their eight runs on 11 hits and four UTSA errors.
Brandon Kimbrel (2-0) picked up the victory in relief, giving up only two hits in the final 2 2/3 innings. Brent Powers, Sam Houston's starter, struck out 10 of the 24 batters he faced before leaving in the bottom of the seventh inning.
Before the series opened on Friday, Sam Houston had not won a regular-season contest over UTSA since 2005. The Roadrunners swept three-game series from the Bearkats in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Active NCAA Division I baseball coaches with 1,000 or more wins
1. Augie Garrido (Texas) 1,736
2. Gene Stephenson (Wichita State) 1,697
3. Mike Martin (Florida State) 1,602
4. Mike Marquess (Stanford) 1,368
5. Jim Morris (Miami) 1,253
6. Jim Gilligan (Lamar) 1,156
7. Jack Leggett (Clemson) 1,119
8. Pete Dunn (Stetson) 1,109
9. Mike Fox (North Carolina) 1,055
10. Steve Kittrell (South Alabama) 1,039
11. Paul Mainieri (LSU) 1,018
12. John Anderson (Minnesota) 1,014
13. Bob Todd (Ohio State) 1,010
14. Mark Johnson (Sam Houston State) 1,000
Tickets for Sam Houston's final two home Southland series (April 29-May 1 vs. Southeastern La. and May 19-21 vs. TAMUCC) are available on line now at www.gobearkats.com/tickets or at the SHSU athletic ticket office located in the Ron Mafrige Field House at Bowers Stadium. Ticket office hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The ticket office telephone is (936) 294-1729.
