Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which has a story about a story. West Virginia’s baseball team is taking its lead and hoping to steal a spot in an NCAA Regional — maybe in Morgantown? — for the first time since 1996. We’ve witnessed a dramatic resurgence for the program in recent years, and certainly you can trace much of the success back to manager Randy Mazey.
This is not exactly new to Mazey, a three-time all-ACC player at Clemson as both a pitcher and outfielder and a 1988 draft pick by the Cleveland Indians. He got his first head coaching job as a 27-year old, made the postseason in his third season and was hired as East Carolina’s head coach in 2003. He won 65 percent of his games there and made two NCAA Regionals and one Super Regional.
And then he was gone, suspended after the 2005 season and then out upon his resignation two months later. He didn’t coach in 2006 and he worked at TCU from 2007-12, never missing the postseason, sharpening his reputation as an elite pitching coach and recruiter, rising to associate head coach and getting passed up for jobs.
He floated onto WVU’s radar after the 2012 season as the Mountaineers readied to enter the Big 12, which was also welcoming TCU. When then-athletic director Oliver Luck dug in and compared his program to those in the region and in the Big 12, he made a simple discovery.
“You know me,” said Luck, a former WVU and NFL quarterback. “I’m not a baseball guy, so to speak, but it seemed like not having a quarterback coach. That’s the most important position in baseball.
“It seemed to me like you could do without a fielding coach or a batting coach more than you could without a pitching coach. I just remember thinking it seemed like the best way to elevate the program was to bring in a handful of good pitchers and develop them.”
Mazey’s known for his work with pitchers, and that was the clear appeal for the Mountaineers, but they also had to explore his exit at ECU. Luck and the search committee, which Keli Cunningham led, did its work. Luck called the man who let Mazey go at ECU, former Davidson and Virginia basketball coach and Wildcats, Cavaliers and ECU athletic director Terry Holland, and Luck called the man who hired Mazey at ECU.
That’d be Marshall athletic director Mike Hamrick.
Hamrick was a Mazey fan, calling on him to replace a legendary coach in 2003, remembering the impact he had as an assistant and the recruiting coordinator in 1998 and adoring Mazey’s wife, Amanda, who would babysit for the Hamricks when she worked in ECU’s athletic department and before she married Randy. Hamrick was at UNLV in 2005, and though he understood Mazey’s ouster, it never changed his unwavering support. He’d pick up the phone from time to time and make a call on Mazey’s, behalf but Mazey “had a hard time getting a job even though they kept winning and winning, probably because people assumed there was something there that was not.”
The phone call to Luck helped most.
“I tried to assure him, ‘Hey, you’re going to get a hell of a coach.’ I was sure about that,” Hamrick said. “About a week after talking to Oliver, Randy called me and said he was going to be the coach at West Virginia. I was very pleased, and at the same time, I knew it would not take him long to get that program up and running.
“If you know Randy like I do, he’s a competitor. He’s driven. He’s a great evaluator of talent. And he’s proving that again.”
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, might as well jump. Jump!
netbros said:
I would be interested in looking at NFL Draft stats about where the players are from geographically. Where were they born? Where did they go to Jr. and high school? Texas used to be a hotbed of football talent, but I don’t see any of the Texas college teams overwhelming the rankings these days. Pick the states with the most high draft picks per capita in the past decade and focus your recruiting efforts there.
This comment came before I wrote what I wrote, but I think I covered the above when I wrote what I wrote. It’s an interesting study. It’s layered. If it wasn’t so overused, I’d say it’s FLUID, too. I do think geography and proximity matter, but nothing is unyielding. The state of Florida had the second-most players drafted. It had no first-round picks, which is shocking. Hadn’t happened since 2009. The state of Texas had the third-highest number of players picked and it had the most four- and five-star recruits from the past five years, but the hottest college in the state is … it’s Houston, right? Texas A&M? The state of Georgia had the most draft picks this year, and WVU really wants to establish itself there, but the Mountaineers are also reducing their efforts in Florida. So, I don’t know. You can’t slice bread with a spoon, but that same spoon can spread butter.
(That made sense in my head.)
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