LSU Skipper Preps For 6th Season In Baton Rouge…

Mainieri

(From LSU Sports Information)

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38 Home Games On Tap For Tigers…

LSU is has released its 2012 college baseball schedule. The Tigers open their season when they host Air Force on Friday, February 17. They play the Falcons again on Sunday the 19th after playing Alcorn State on the 18th.

The Tigers play 20 of their first 22 games at home. Other non-conference opponents during that season opening stretch are McNeese State, Appalachian State, Grambling, Dartmouth (3), Michigan (2), and Notre Dame (2).

The games against Michigan and Notre Dame are March 9-10 and 11-12, respectively. Head coach Paul Mainieri is now entering his sixth season at LSU. He was the head coach at Notre Dame prior to that. This will be his first meeting against his former team since arriving in Baton Rouge. Mainier led the Irish to the College World Series in 2002. He guided the Tigers to Omaha in 2008 and 2009, capturing the ’09 national championship.

LSU opens SEC play when it hosts Mississippi State March 16-18. Other conference home opponents are Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, and Vanderbilt.

The Bayou Bengals go on the road in SEC play to face Auburn, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, and defending national champion South Carolina.

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The best part is, when you click on one of the red links to Dugouthats.com you will save 20% on your order when you enter the coupon code CB360!

Associate Head Coach Departs After Three Years…

Just a day after being left out 2011 NCAA Baseball Tournament, LSU has announced the resignation of associate head coach David Grewe.

David Grewe (left) and LSU head coach Paul Mainieri

“David has decided to take his career in a new direction, and we wish him the best in all of his future endeavors,” head coach Paul Mainieri said in a written statement. “We’re very grateful to David for the contributions he made to our program, including being a part of a national championship, a conference championship and two league tournament titles.”

Grewe helped LSU win the 2009 national championship in 2009, his first season in Baton Rouge. He has served at pitching coach and recruiting coordinator for the past three seasons. Previously, the 35-year-old Grewe was the head coach at Michigan State from 2006-2009. He was an assistant for Mainieri at Notre Dame from 2004-2005.

“For my personal development, I want to explore the possibilities to expand my role as a college baseball coach and professional,” Grewe said. “Unfortunately, the timing of this desire does not match the timing for the LSU baseball program and its immediate needs. Therefore, I have made a decision based on these timing issues and my personal desires as well as the “unknown” of the next several months to make [athletic director] Joe Alleva and Paul Mainieri aware of the fact that I will not be returning following the end of my 2011 contract.”

Grewe reportedly had interest in the Ohio State and Notre Dame head coaching vacancies during the summer of 2010, but they were filled by Greg Beals and Mik Aoki, respectively.

Mainieri now will look to fill the vacancy quickly.

“We will have a coach who can best develop the outstanding pitchers that are returning to the team along with a very talented of group of recruits that will join the program in August,” he said.

Despite its 36-20 record this season, LSU was left out of the NCAA Tournament for the third time in the past six seasons. The Tigers finished sixth overal in the SEC with a 4.13 team ERA.

Bayou Bengal Baseball Team Awaits Next Week’s Announcement…

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LSU head baseball coach Paul Mainieri has dismissed a pitcher from his team. Kevin Koziol, 19, was kicked-off the team Monday after being charged Sunday with DUI, reckless operation of a vehicle and disobeying a red light.

Kevin Koziol

“There are certain levels of behavior I expect out of LSU baseball players and that is not one of them,” Mainieri told the Baton Rouge Advocate. “They’ve been well warned. In this particular case, I was left with no alternative in my mind but to dismiss him.”

“If they don’t want to abide by the types of behaviors I expect out of our players, there’s no reason for them to be a part of the program.”

Koziol, a freshman from Orland Park, Ill, was the 2010 Illinois Gatorade Player of the Year and an Under Armour All-American.

Koziol is the second SEC pitcher in the last week to be dismissed from his team. Sophomore hurler Ethan Carter was dismissed last week at South Carolina.

Spanning the country once again for college baseball nuggets during the off-season…

• Some sad news to start the Notebook this week. San Diego State head coach and MLB Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn has been diagnosed with cancer of the salivary gland. Gwynn’s cancer, which is located beneath his
  

  Tony Gwynn

  tongue, is said to have been diagnosed early. He will begin radiation and chemotherapy treatment.

• A much needed shot in the arm for college baseball  out of Lincoln, NE. The University of Nebraska announced it plans to spend $4.75 million to build an indoor baseball/softball practice facility that would be located at Haymarket Park, where the Cornhuskers play their home baseball games inside Hawks Field. The proposed 22,000 square foot facility would include indoor batting cages and pitchers mounds. It will also give Nebraska a big leg-up when it heads to the Big Ten. The news also comes just more than a week after Cal-Berkley announced it will eliminate baseball, which has been in existence since 1892, after the upcoming 2011 season. Cal is currently in the process of an estimated $321 million renovation of its football stadium. Nebraska also plans to renovated its football stadium. That proposed project will cost about $55.5 million. Both Nebraska projects are still subject to final approval by its Board of Regents.
  

  Future MLB great Steve Garvey played football & baseball at Michigan St. (courtesy MSU athletics).

• Former MLB great Steve Garvey was recently inducted into the Michigan State Athletics Hall of Fame. Garvey was a football and baseball player at MSU from 1966-1968. In those days freshmen were not eligible to play, so Garvey served as head coach Duffy Daugherty’s scout team quarterback the week before the epic 10-10 tie with #1 Notre Dame. Garvey recorded 30 tackles on the gridiron the next fall as a defensive back and then earned All-American honors on the diamond in the spring of 1968 with a .376 average, nine home runs and 38 RBIs. He belted a grand slam in his first career at-bat at MSU. Garvey left Michigan State after the LA Dodgers took him with the 13th overall pick in the 1968 draft. He went on to play in five World Series and earned 1974 NL MVP honors.

• Speaking of two sport athletes, we released our second Two-Sport Report of the fall last week. Among the notable recent performances noted there is Jacksonville State quarterback Coty Blanchard. The freshman earned All-Ohio Valley Conference honors last week for his efforts in the Gamecock’s win over Murray State. Jacksonville St. is ranked 4th in the most recent FCS national rankings. Blanchard was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles out of high school this June and plans to play shortstop at JSU next spring. The Two-Sport Report also includes updates on the likes of Clemson’s Kyle Parker, NC State’s Russell Wilson, Taiwan Easterling of Florida State, and many others.

• South Carolina head coach Ray Tanner has received a contract extension. Tanner earned the extension after leading the Gamecocks to the program’s first national championship earlier this year. The new deal runs through 2015 and will pay him $510, 000 annually.

• We also recently released a list of former college baseball players who are on the rosters of MLB Playoff teams. San Franciso Giants rookie Buster Posey is among those on the list. Each of the eight playoff teams has at least 16 former college guys on their active roster. Would you believe Kent State is tied with two other schools for the most players on the list? Click Here to see the full rundown.

• Florida and Ole Miss each released their schedules last week. The Rebels don’t have any eye-popping non-conference games, but the Gators host three games with Miami and also play four games against Florida State. The series is split with single games in Gainesville, Talahassee, Tampa, and Jacksonville. Florida and Ole Miss will also each host defending national champion South Carolina in SEC action.
  

  Cody Regis, Trevor Brown and Aaron Weimer were among UCLA players honored at Dodger Stadium (UCLA photo).

• The UCLA baseball team was recently honored at Dodger Stadium for its runner-up finish at the College World Series. The Bruins finished the 2010 season with the best record in school history at 51-17 before falling to South Carolina in the best-of-three CWS Championship Series. The Dodgers also announced the 2011 Dodgertown Classic, which will take place March 11-13 at Dodger Stadium. UCLA, USC, Georgia, and St. Mary’s (CA) will all participate.

• LSU has long been one of the most popular college baseball teams in the country, and it’s showing as well in the world of social media. According to sportsfangraph.com, LSU baseball ranks 29th in baseball social media followers. The Tiger’s combined Facebook and Twitter numbers total roughly 109,00o. The #29 ranking is tops among college baseball programs and comes in ahead of three MLB teams: the Pittsburgh Pirates, Arizona Diamondbacks and Washington Nationals. Sports Fan Graph tracks more than 84-million fans who follow teams on Facebook and more than 17-million who track teams on Twitter. The New York Yankees are the most followed baseball team with more than 4.5 million social media fans.

• Texas scrimmaged Texas State Sunday, and there were both old and new faces on the diamond for Augie Garrido’s Longhorns. Texas lost 9-0 in the 12-inning fall exhibition, but next season’s potential starting rotation pitched well. junior Taylor Jungmann, senior Cole Green and sophomore Hoby Miner combined to surrender just one hit and one walk over the first 6.0 innings. Jungmann fired two perfect innings, while Green gave-up the hit. Sophomore Keifer Nuncio and freshman Nathan Thornhill combined to give-up seven runs in the 10th and 11th innings. It is the fall, and the Longhorns had trouble trying to turn double plays in both of those innings that would have limited the Bobcat damage.

A latest look at fall college baseball happenings…

• The big news of the week (and probably the year) is that Cal will eliminate baseball after the 2011 season. Title IX has taken a beating since the news was announced last Tuesday, but this is not a Title IX issue, especially
  

  Cal head coach Dave Esquer

  considering women’s gymnastics and women’s lacrosse are among the other sports that Golden Bears Athletic Director Sandy Barbour and Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau will give the ax. The move is a sign of a time when pure economics drives decisions in college athletics. A reported $321 million football stadium renovation doesn’t help things. That said, it’s one thing to hear of schools like Vermont and Duquesne dropping baseball. Those schools don’t have football revenue to prop them up. But this is a BCS conference school, and a “baseball” conference to boot. If a place like Cal, which has won two national championships and has been to the College World Series a total of five times, can cut baseball it doesn’t bode well for other programs across the land.

• I took a small step in my own show of support for the Golden Bears this week when I ordered my Cal baseball cap from Dugouthats.com. I’ll be wearing it as much as possible through the end of the Cal baseball era.

• Have you seen the Sporting News Magazine Sports’ Smartest Athletes list?  Former Yale and current Oakland A’s pitcher Craig Breslow has the distinction of the smartest athlete in the land. Breslow was a molecular
  

  Craig Breslow

  biophysics and biochemistry major at Yale and was once accepted to NYU’s medical school after scoring a 34 on his MCAT…the average med school applicant scores a 28. Breslow isn’t the only former college baseball player on the list. In fact, six former college baseball stars reside among the top 13 on the 20-man list. They are: #3 Ross Ohlendorf – Princeton/Pittsburgh Pirates. #8) Chris Young - Princeton/San Diego Padres…he’s the first athlete to be named All-Ivy League in both baseball and basketball. #9) Brad Ausmus – Dartmouth/Houston Astros. #12) Jody Gerut – Stanford/San Diego Padres. #13) Craig Counsell – Notre Dame/Milwaukee Brewers. Kansas City Royals pitcher Brian Bannister, who played at USC, is also listed as an honorable mention pick.

• Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 2011 college baseball schedules were released last week, including the first ACC slate released to date – Virginia Tech. The Hokies biggest early test will be their opening weekend at the Coastal Carolina Tournament.

• The field is set for the 2011 Houston College Classic at Minute Maid Park. Houston, Rice, Texas A&M, Baylor, Kentucky, and Utah will all participate in the March 4-6 event in the big league ballpark. Utah released its schedule last week, and the Utes will open their season with three games at Cal, three games at Arkansas, and then open in Houston against Texas A&M. That gives Bill Kinneberg’s squad seven straight games to open the 2011 campaign against 2010 NCAA Tournament teams.
  

  Chad Jones (Travis Spradling photo)

• Former LSU two-sport star Chad Jones was back in Baton Rouge over the weekend. At halftime of Saturday’s LSU-Tennessee football game LSU showed a video recapping his career as a football and baseball player for the Tigers. He and former LSU teammate Jared Mitchell are the only two players to ever win both a BCS football national title and the College World Series. Jones gave-up baseball for a pro football career when he was drafted by the New York Giants last spring, but his athletic career is on hold right now. He nearly lost his leg in June when he crashed his SUV into a pole in New Orleans. Jones is currently going through extensive rehab and could still require more surgery on the leg in the future.

• The Big 12 Tournament will go back to a double elimination format beginning in 2011. Big 12 athletic directors approved the proposal from the league’s baseball coaches. The Big 12 has used a pool play format since 2006, but the change will be made after four games on the second to last day of this year’s tournament were meaningless. Eight teams will qualify for the 2001 tournament. They will be split into two pools and use double elimination to determine the winner of each pool. The winners will then play for the championship.

BC’s Coach Expected To Take Irish Helm Next Week…

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South Bend, Ind. – During his 12 seasons at Note Dame (1995-2006), Paul Mainieri amassed a record of 533-213-3 as head coach of the Irish baseball team. In his final eight seasons at Notre Dame, the current LSU head coach won 367 games while taking the Irish to eight straight NCAA Tournaments. He also ended ND’s 45-year College World Series drought with a 2002 trip to Omaha.

In his first four seasons at LSU, Mainieri’s teams have made two College World Series appearances with a 2009 national championship under his belt.

Dave Schrage

It would be an understatement to say things have not gone as well at Notre Dame during the past four seasons, as Mainieri’s successor Dave Schrage compiled a record of 119-114-1 from 2007-2010. Schrage’s Irish finished this past season with a 22-32 record while failing to qualify for the Big East Tournament for the first time since Notre dame joined the conference in 1996. It also was the program’s first losing record since 1987.

Dave Schrage was fired in June.

Sources have told CollegeBaseball360.com that a press conference will be held “early next week” and at that time Boston College head coach Mikio Aoki will be named Notre Dame’s next baseball coach.

Aoki’s 114-104-1 record over the past four years is only slightly better than Schrage’s, but the BC coach has compiled that record in an Atlantic Coast Conference that has seen a total of eight teams advance to the CWS during that time. Louisville is the only Big East team to qualify for the CWS since 2007. In fact, while Louisville and Notre Dame are the only current Big East teams to advance to Omaha in the past 20 years, ACC teams have combined to make 26 appearances in the CWS during that same stretch (Miami has made several CWS appearances since 1990, but the Hurricanes did not join the ACC until 2005). Only the SEC, with 33 appearances, has sent more teams to Omaha in the past two decades.

Mikio Aoki

Aoki also has another feather in his cap that Schrage could not accomplish – an NCAA Regional berth. Aoki’s 2009 squad became the first Boston College team in 42 years to qualify for the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 42 years, and he coached in possibly the most famous game in NCAA Regional history when his Eagles fell 3-2 in 25 innings to eventual CWS runner-up Texas.

“You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?” – Talking Heads Once In A Lifetime lyrics

When Schrage was hired at Notre Dame in the summer of 2006, he stepped into his dream job. He was was a lifelong Notre Dame fan who had grown up in the Chicago suburbs, shagging batting practice home run balls at Wrigley Field. It wasn’t long, though, before his dream turned into a nightmare. Schrage’s wife, Jody, died after a battle with cancer shortly before the start of the 2007 season. “He was never the same person after that,” a person close to Schrage told me. “He was still a baseball guy, but there were times in the dugout when you could just tell he didn’t have that same fire.”

While Schrage’s personal tragedy was devastating, the contrast of his own personality compared to that of Mainieri’s was a tough adjustment for the players who had suited up for both coaches. “I think it all goes back to that first year,” former ND captain Jeremy Barnes told CB360. “A lot of things happened off the field that were hard to deal with.  I would say Schrage was not fully himself and things were a little more lax.”

Jeremy Barnes

Barnes, who is in his second season in the Philadelphia Phillies minor-league organization, added, “Mainieri ran a very tight ship. It created a different culture, and with the team being so young it was unfortunately the wrong type of foundation to build upon for the next couple of years, because the majority of that group was there for the next three or four years.”

“Player A” agreed. “Mainieri had incredible senior leadership in the lockerroom where everything was policed amongst us,” he said. “Coach Schrage didn’t implement that disciplinary value amongst the players from the get-go, and so when he doesn’t come back with [discipline] either … the discipline was missing. The culture itself of Notre Dame baseball is completely different [now]. There are no similarities at all. None.”

Last of the breed …

Ryan Connolly was a fifth-year senior for the Irish this past season. He sat out all of 2006 (Mainieri’s last at ND) due to a shoulder injury. He battled the injury during his Notre Dame career but still managed to lead his team with a .335 average, 11 HR and 38 RBIs in 2010. He was the only player remaining from the Mainieri era.

Ryan Connolly

“I think the biggest difference [between Schrage and Mainieri] was organization,” Connolly said. “Mainieri was overly organized to the point it was overwhelming, but at the same time we would have been lost without it. You knew when you had to go to the bathroom, tie your shoes … everything was down to the second. That just made going out and playing baseball that much easier, because you didn’t have to worry about anything. You could just go out and play. Coach Schrage was looser, and I think guys struggled with that.”

However, Connolly says he and his teammates share the blame with Schrage: “Did he go out there and play? No. There are nine guys who go out there and play, but at the end of the day if we don’t go out there and win they’re going to go to the top. It’s the nature of the beast, and he’s an easy target. I have no beef with Dave Schrage.” Connolly said.

The great communicator …

While Connolly sees organization as the biggest difference between Mainieri and Schrage, ‘Player B‘ sees another big difference. “Mainieri was always talking to players and communicating with them to make sure everyone was mentally prepared to succeed,” he said. “He wanted to always make sure that everyone knew their role on the team and that we were in the loop on what was going on. Not every player was OK with it, but everyone always knew what was going on at all times.”

However, “Player B” says that approach was not the case with Schrage: “Not a lot of guys knew what was going on.  Not a lot of guys understood their role on the team. Some guys would just happen to see the lineup card and see they were playing that day, but there was no communication between player and coach before that, whereas coach Mainieri would have a 30-minute conversation with a guy if it was someone who hadn’t played in a while, so he would be mentally prepared.”

When it comes to communicating, Aoki would appear to be somewhere in the middle between Mainieri and Schrage.

Mike Belfiore pitched for Boston College in the previously mentioned 25-inning game during the 2009 Austin Regional. He was selected by the Arizona Diamondbacks with the 45th overall pick in the 2009 MLB draft and now pitches for the single-A South Bend Silverhawks … whose stadium happens to be about a 10-minute drive from the Notre Dame campus.

Mike Belfiore

Belfiore recently told the South Bend Tribune: “Coach Aoki doesn’t say a lot. That’s part of his personality. He lets everything pan out, and then he’ll bring you in his office and let you know where things stand. He doesn’t play that game of you have to guess where you’re at.:

Belfiore also told the Tribune: “[Aoki] is a great guy. He always made school the first priority …H e knows how to back his players up in every sense. He doesn’t let you beat your head into a brick wall. He’ll always point out things that you need to work on. He always wants you to be better.”

Barnes says it’s an approach that he thinks will be important for Notre Dame’s next head coach. “You have to be firm and unwavering,” Barnes said. “As soon as you get there, implement your rules and philosophies and do not waiver, even on the little things. Have an open door to the players and try to keep a good relationship with them, but at the same time you’re the boss – players don’t run the program.”

Northern exposure …

Assuming Aoki is Notre Dame’s next head coach, he will face many of the same challenges that he has faced at Boston College. Boston is only slightly farther north on the map than South Bend, so Aoki has dealt with similar weather to what he will see in Northern Indiana.

He succeeded in recent years with rosters that were comprised mostly of players from the northeast, at a time when many of the top players from that region have opted to stay relatively close to home by playing in the warmer weather of the nearby Carolinas and Virginia, to name a few.

Evan Marzilli and Christian Walker are from Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, respectively, but they helped South Carolina win the 2010 national title. Cody Wheeler (Indiana), Tommy LaStella (New York) and Anthony Meo (Rhode Island) helped Coastal Carolina’s 2010 team fashion the best season in the program’s history, while Virginia’s talented closer Kevin Arico hails from New Jersey.

Aoki’s new association with Notre Dame will give him a much broader recruiting canvas, but it also will bring with it a more strict academic standard. According to one source, San Diego pitcher Sammy Solis and Illinois outfielder Willie Argo are two recent examples of smart student-athletes who wanted to play for Schrage at Notre Dame, but they could not meet the school’s high academic standards.

An inside shot of Eck Stadium (courtesy und.com)

Solis – whose father played at Notre Dame – was 9-2 with a 3.42 ERA for the WCC champion Toreros this year, while Argo belted 16 home runs with 51 stolen bases and a .335 batting average during his first two years for the Illini (’09-’10).

Whatever challenges Aoki faces in academics could be countered with a facility upgrade. At Boston College, the playing field also doubles as a parking lot during football season, while Notre Dame’s Frank Eck Stadium (built in 1994) still is among the top three baseball facilities in the Big East. Only Louisville’s Jim Patterson Stadium and Marge Schott Stadium in Cincinnati would rank above Eck.

Back to the future?

If in fact Aoki is named Notre Dame’s next head coach, the first questions will be the composition of his coaching staff. Aoki did not have a pitching coach at Boston College, and one source has indicated that current Irish assistant Dave Dengler could be retained in that role.

There also is the question of the value of having a former Notre Dame player on the new staff.  “I don’t think it’s important,” Barnes said. “I think when I was there, we had the kind of players who understood team cohesiveness.  If one of those players was hired as an assistant, he would know that feeling and type of player they should recruit and be successful there. I think it would be beneficial, but I don’t think it’s a necessity.”

Connolly concurs: “I don’t think [a former ND player on the staff is] necessary, but it may help. [ND football coach] Brian Kelly had no ties to Notre Dame, but that guy knows what it means to be at Notre Dame. He kicked it up seven gears.  You don’t have to be associated with ND to coach here.”

“Player A” simply says of the current change: “This is a great time for Notre Dame baseball”.