Building a champion
5/31/2012 7:06:00 AM | Baseball
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From where the Bearkats were a year to where they are today is not exactly the difference between night and day. But what the Sam Houston baseball program, led by first-year head coach David Pierce, has done is to raise the profile in a big way.
From hitting the recruiting trail hard, figuring out which players would fill out the everyday lineup to shoring up the pitching staff, the Kats have gone from middlings of the Southland Conference to regular-season champs and an at-large selection to the NCAA tournament.
"A lot of us didn't really know what to expect with a new coach and a lot of new players," senior catcher John Hale said. "We didn't know how good we were going to be, if we were going to be good or what the deal was. All through the fall it was the same way until the season got started."
When a run-rule loss at the hands of rival Texas State in the Southland Conference tournament effectively ended Sam Houston's season in 2011, the Kats began to look forward to what 2012 was going to offer.
There was plenty of uncertainty as head coach Mark Johnson was retiring and five everyday players and three weekend pitchers were graduating.
Once Pierce, an assistant at Rice for nine years, was hired, he first needed to find a pair of assistant coaches who would help him rebuild the team. Pierce convinced Philip Miller, an assistant coach at Northwestern State the past two years and formerly a volunteer assistant for Johnson, and Sean Allen, who was previously at Florida International for four years, to join his team.
With those two assistants in the fold, Pierce knew the next order of business was to go out and find some quality recruits from the high school and junior college level.
"What we wanted is to really create competition. We had some good players returning and we knew we needed to fill in the blanks," Pierce said after a workout at Don Sanders Stadium on Wednesday. "We were able to bring in some kids late in the summer that have really filled those voids."
Securing a handful of future Bearkats, what Pierce and his newly formed staff had to do was make sure that his returning players and his newcomers would develop a synergy.
"It took a while for all of the new guys to get acclimated. There were so many guys, they kind of outnumbered the returning guys. It's still baseball, so it wasn't that big of a change. We had a little bit of time for everybody to get meshed together as a team," Hale said.
"It was just one of those things where we just said let's go out and play and see what happens."
Getting a first glance at those new players, sophomore outfielder Luke Plucheck was impressed with what he saw.
"They were hard workers. They came in - they didn't say a whole lot at first, but that's kind of expected out of freshmen - and they worked hard and earned their position," Plucheck said.
From the work in the fall to the preseason training in the spring, the newcomers like true freshmen Colt Atwood (.317 batting average with 16 runs batted in), Ryan O'Hearn (.312 with two home runs and 30 RBIs) and Corey Toups (.266 with 23 RBIs) found their place and soon won battles for jobs in the starting lineup.
"With Toups, we really didn't have a choice. We didn't have a lot of depth at shortstop. Any other given year, he might not have had the opportunities that we gave him and because of that, he's become a much stronger and better player," Pierce said.
"Colt Atwood has just been solid from the day he stepped foot on campus, and with Ryan O'Hearn, at the turn of the semester it was obvious that if we were going to be equal at (first base) that we were going to be better with the younger player and get him some at-bats.
"Those things with those three kids really allowed us to create that lineup."
The young group of Bearkats, including newcomer Anthony Azar (.382 with three home runs and a team-leading 35 RBIs), a junior college transfer who was an All-Southland first-team selection as a designated hitter, made an immediate impact.
"We worked hard in the fall and I knew that we would have to keep on working in the spring," O'Hearn said. "I just kept on learning progressively as the year went on and felt more comfortable every day and just played my game of baseball."
The pitching staff was another area that needed to be addressed since the Bearkats lost three weekend starters (Matt Shelton, Brandon Kimbrel and Brent Powers) who pitched an extensive amount of innings.
Sophomore Caleb Smith continued where he left off from his freshman campaign and was a solid Friday starter for the Kats with an 8-5 record and a 3.00 earned run average. Coming off Tommy John surgery, senior Justin Jackson was also very strong and dependable with an 8-4 record and a 2.93 ERA in 15 starts. With Cody Dickson, who was one of Sam Houston's best starting pitchers early in the season, struggling in the second half of the season, senior Michael Oros (7-1 and 2.67 ERA) solidified the Sunday spot in the rotation.
"It was a great shot in the arm to get Justin back. You never know how guys are going to respond from Tommy John, but he's responded very well," Pierce said. "Justin and Michael Oros, those two seniors, have been huge for us. The sophomores of Cody and Caleb, we needed a lot of innings out of them.
"They had the opportunity to fail because we haven't had a lot of depth. They've been able to fail, learn from it and that's made them better in the end."
As they battled through the early stages of the season, the Bearkats showed that they would be a scrappy team as they won two of their first three weekend series and won three one-run games before conference play started.
It wasn't until the third conference series when Sam Houston pulled off a rare three-game sweep against defending regular-season and Southland tourney champ Texas State that the Kats realized that they might have something cooking.
"It started back in the fall, especially when we played UT and beat them," Plucheck said. "I really think the turning point was the Texas State series. We were playing well early in the year and beat San Diego (a No. 2 seed in the Los Angeles Regional) and had a setback against Louisiana-Monroe (the No. 4 seed in this week's Baton Rouge Regional).
"I think the Texas State series really summed us up. We all came together and showed everybody what we were capable of. Obviously they came in 23rd in the country and favored to win the conference. We put it to them and I think everybody opened their eyes because even though we're young, we showed we were going to be a force to be reckoned with."
Beginning with the first game against Texas State, the Kats rolled to a 13-game winning streak that stretched three weeks.
After going 7-2 in the first three conference series, Sam Houston found a way to continue what had worked for it through the course of the season and tied a Southland record for 24 league wins and won its first regular-season title for the first-time since 1989.
"You never know about the expectation of it, but if you don't dream it or think it, you definitely won't do it," Pierce said of winning a Southland championship. "From the get-go, that's what I tried to sell them that no matter what, we're going to win and develop. We never got away from our intent from day one. When you pass that onto your players and they truly believe in you and believe that it's possible, then anything's possible."
In the conference tournament, which was held in San Marcos, the Kats faltered in the first game, but bounced back to win a pair of elimination before falling to eventual tournament champ UT Arlington.
The Kats did well enough, despite losing in the Southland tournament, to still get into the NCAA tournament as an at-large selection.
After the season they've had and getting ready to play Arkansas in the NCAA's Houston Regional, the Bearkats feel that with how they've been playing over the last few weeks that winning this weekend's tournament at Reckling Park is well within their grasp. The first order of business in Houston will be to try and get an upper hand on the regional by beating the Razorbacks in the first game and playing from the winners' bracket.
"We've got to worry about Arkansas first. They've got a great team with a lot of great guys," Hale added.
