UNCW Baseball: Hood talks COVID shutdown, returning experience, optimism for 2021
The Seahawks open the season on Feb. 19
It’s been far too long — yet — it seems like baseball season’s arrival came quickly, with UNCW set to open vs. VCU on Feb. 19.
When last we saw the Seahawks, they were celebrating at home plate after Matt Suggs’ three-run bomb delivered a walk-off victory over East Carolina on March 11.
That same night, the world of sports came face-to-face with COVID-19 for the first time as Rudy Gobert’s positive test led to a dramatic scene in Oklahoma City, as the NBA cancelled the Thunder’s game vs. the Utah Jazz just moments before tipoff.
Hours later, UNCW decided to postpone its weekend series with East Tennessee State, and two days later, the entire season was cancelled.
It’s been a long, strange journey back to Brooks Field, and with the season approaching, UNCW coach Randy Hood and several players met with media on Monday afternoon to reflect on the offseason and look forward to the 2021 season, where the Seahawks are projected to win the CAA’s South Division behind preseason Player of the Year Landen Roupp and three more first-team All-CAA selections.
Editor’s Note: The Seahawk Perch is excited to be expanding its roster, and in turn, provide coverage of UNCW Baseball. We’ll look to tell stories of the players, coaches, games and trends at Brooks Field all season. Have suggestions? We’d love feedback on how to shape our coverage, and with more success, potentially expand our coverage to the rest of UNCW Athletics. Know of a student who’d be interested in contributing? Get in touch at TheSeahawkPerch@gmail.com.
Here are the highlights of the conversation with Hood, with quotes from players to come on Wednesday:
Opening Statement
It’s been a heck of a 10 months since March 11, since that last East Carolina game. A lot of things that none of us even imagined we’d be a part of or having to deal with as part of our past 10 months, but I’ve been extremely proud of how our guys have gone about back business since the last spring, since over the summer and then once we got back together as a team this past fall and were able to start practicing and start doing some things that these guys are here to go to school for and that’s to get a great education here at UNCW and also to play high-level baseball.
We’ve got a great group of guys; got 42 on the roster right now with extended eligibility and all the different parameters because of COVID and roster sizes and things like that. We’re about seven guys over what would normally carry, but I’m very happy with where we’re at, who we have back. We’ve got a great group of experienced returning pitchers … you’ve got Landen, Luke (Gesell) and Breydan (Gorham), guys that have pitched a lot for us the last three to four years and been in a lot of big games and have won a lot of games, have been in championships.
We feel very comfortable with some of the young players and transfers and pitchers that we’ve brought into our program and have developed over the past year to be able to step into some other roles, whether it be as starters and relievers and things like that. From a pitching staff standpoint, we feel like that’s a very big strength of ours and something we can lean on just like last year.
From a position player standpoint, I think we have eight or nine of our everyday starters back. You’re going to see that a lot in college baseball; we’re fortunate enough to have those guys back and excited to just see them mix with our newcomers, and I feel like we’ve got a chance to be very productive as an offense.
I think one that’s going to standout, and I’ll knock on wood a little bit, but I think we’re going to be a really strong defensive team. I think we’re going to be able to pitch the baseball, I think we’re going to field it, and I think we’ll be — maybe not the power-type team that you’ve seen in past years — but a team that’s going to be athletics on the bases, create a lot of runs; a team that’s going to make things happen. That’s kind of what we’ve preached as a coaching staff and I think our players have bought into it. Just looking forward to competing against somebody else.
We’ve scrimmaged a lot in the fall; we’ve had seven scrimmages so far this spring. I like the way our guys have been getting after it. It’s different because of all of the protocols and parameters we’re having to deal with on a day-to-day basis and not knowing day-to-day if, potentially, you might lose somebody or you have to stop as a program. Fortunately, we haven’t had to deal with that all fall or all spring and I keep my fingers crossed every day that we can continue to move forward.
I think our league is set up very well. The league preseason stuff came out the other day and we told our team, we’re fortunate enough that we’ve been picked a lot to potentially be top of the league a lot of years, but we know what’s on paper at the beginning of the year doesn’t mean a lot other than what you guys can talk about and what people can read. We want to be there at the end of the year and I think our guys know that, they keep pushing themselves, they know what our goals are throughout the year and at the end of the year.
Our league is going to be very strong. I think Northeastern has a lot of guys back and Mike Glavine has done a great job there and in the south side, obviously Charleston started off really good last year; they’re going to be strong. Then, I think the other three teams in our Southern Division with James Madison, William & Mary and Elon are going to be very competitive.
I think if we stay healthy and everybody stays on pace on what we feel like we should be doing, we should be sitting pretty good at the end of the season.\
On the COVID stoppage and uncertainty
I’ve said this a lot in a lot of interviews since the summer. That was one of the toughest times I’ve ever dealt with as a coach; we were playing pretty good at that point. Yeah, we didn’t play great the weekend before against Memphis but I think we all felt we were kind of getting where we needed to, playing a big midweek game. Everybody knows how things ended with the walk-off and everything; we’re 11-5, we’re sitting pretty good, getting ready to start conference pretty soon … I just felt like we were really getting ready to hit our stride and get going and there were some things happening. You were hearing it and you saw the Ivy League cancel, I think, during batting practice that night … then all of a sudden, the next morning, we were meeting as an administrative staff, talking about the weekend series with East Tennessee State. At 10 a.m., 1 o’clock, we cancelled that weekend and by 1 o’clock, 24 hours later on Friday, I’m talking to the team in the indoor and cancelling the season.
Things happened so quickly, out of our control, I know these guys had a lot of things going on. There’s a lot of them sitting on here, they didn’t know if they were going to play college baseball anymore. We kind of figured out how to make it work the rest of the way.
On the uncertainty around building the roster
Three or four of them, I think they already in their minds, had made up after a few weeks or a month passed, it was their time to kind of move on and move forward in their lives whether it be grad school somewhere else or start a job. There was obviously multiple seniors and guys that had eligibility that didn’t really know what they were going to do because there were still options with the Major League Baseball Draft; not knowing how that was going to work, not knowing if free agency was in play, things like that.
So, when it all kind of shaped out, and we didn’t really know exactly until August, we were able to keep four seniors to come back for eligibility which is Breydan, Cole, Luke and Zach Bridges.
Our recruiting class, we had a decent-sized recruiting class of freshmen. We felt like we had to add a few pieces and with roster sizes being available to open up a little bit, we were able to go out and get a grad transfer and a couple of other transfers to fill some holes. It just felt like it made sense for us to kind of do that because of not knowing how everything was going to shape out. Honestly, it was day-to-day from March 11 as far as figuring out how things were going to happen, what was going on, what we’re able to do, things like that. It’s kind of been in that mode up until today; every day, things change.
Very comfortable with where we’re at; super proud of the guys that came back and are playing an extra year and I want to give them every opportunity to have a great experience and I feel like, and i think they agree and our team agrees, we had something special last year and we just never got to finish it. We want to get back into that mode and have a good season and finish off a great season for a lot of these guys but also for our program.
On managing the bigger roster
I’ve always been a big fan of using guys if they’re ready for certain roles and I look at as position player-wise as well, whether it’s lefty-righty matchups … using a baserunner in the right situation that can help steal a run in a certain inning of a game that can make a difference or a guy that is very good at doing certain things on the back-half of a game, whether it’s pinch hitting, bunting or whatever to help us win baseball games. I think our guys understand that’s kind of the way I like to go about managing the game.
From the pitching side of it, it gives you a lot of options; we’ve got more lefty-righty options than we’ve ever had, but also because of our schedule, the way things have shaped out over the first four weeks and potentially the unknown of the schedule, we’ve got some four-game weekends where, when you’re playing four, nine-inning games Friday, Saturday, Sunday, that’s going to be taxing on your pitching staff. We want to play as many games as possible, but we’ve also got to be smart and with having the extra arms and things like that, I think that’s going to allow us to be very comfortable when we play, how we go about and the decisions we make, not just from a position-player standpoint, but from a pitching standpoint as well.
On having experience going into a season under strange circumstances
You can lean on these guys, not just for games but for practices and how we go about our business and the things, the little things, that we talk about how we want to do things every day, whether it be in the locker room or wherever. These guys have heard it before, they’ve heard it a lot and they probably will tell you they hear it too much, but it’s just something I believe in on how we do certain things. These guys have won two conference championships and been in two regionals. … they’ve been in the fire. They’ve seen us when we’ve struggled all year, two years ago in 2019, we knew we had the ability to do well and start playing better baseball, and we put it together the last three or four weeks and made the run through the CAA Tournament, then played pretty well in the Kinston regional.
I’m glad to have the experience. I think they will all tell you, just because you’re an older guy doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed playing time, You’ve got to earn it, you’ve got to come about and do your business the right way, every day. Each of these guys, for the most part, came into our program and if you’re ready to play as a freshman, you’re going to get an opportunity if you deserve it and they were in that position a while back; some of them were, some of them transferred in. We’re going to play the guys that help us win baseball games and these guys understand what competition’s all about, they’ve been through the fire and I’m excited to have them and I’m looking forward to see what they’re able to do this year.
Are there any positives to take from circumstances of the past year?
I think a lot of it is just having patience and trying to understand a lot of this is out of our control. Sometimes in games, whether it’s baseball, whatever sport you’re playing in, when you make hasty decisions and things like that, you can put yourself behind the 8-Ball. I think just having a little patience in a nine-inning baseball game takes time. We talk about not giving up the big inning, just finding a way to get through that and minimize. I think if you just look at everything negative about what’s going on, it’s just about having patience, trusting in the guy beside of you and having comfort that we’re back together as a group. This is where we’re supposed to be, this is something we came here for when we chose to go to this school either as coaches as players and we’re able to get out there, be together and we’re going to find our way to get through this.
Like I said earlier, if we can be what we’re capable of being, we’re going to be in a good place at the end of this spring.
On Ron Evans getting off to a fast start in 2020
Ron, last year, jumped right out and I think he hit three home runs maybe in the first week-and-a-half, I think in his first college at-bat. Then, like a lot of young guys, they start getting pitched different because all of a sudden, everybody that you’re facing has a scouting report from the previous team. They can watch Synergy and all the different videos and things like that and they can find your weaknesses real quick. … A lot of these guy probably don’t experience the amount of failure to college as you do once you get into college, whether it be high school or travel ball or things like that.
All of a sudden, you get into college and you’re playing against a lot of really great players and you’ve got to really grind whether it be mentally or physically and put the work in to kind of get through that downswing. We talk about it all the time, about being consistent; whether it’s consistent on the mound, consistent in the field or consistent at the plate and I think it takes a while for some guys that haven’t had that failure prior to college to understand what that’s all about.
I think that hit Ron a little bit. He’s a great guy, he’s worked hard, he’s in great shape right now and I’m looking forward to him having a big year, him being a big part of our position group. He’s very athletic to be a bigger guy. We’ve played him a lot at first; I do think he’s a very good third-baseman, has range you wouldn’t think he would have. Heck, in our scrimmage the other day … we played him at second base because of having some injuries, and he made some nice plays. His calling-card is his bat. We need to get that to where he’s confident every day and is going to be a run-producer and things like that. He’s going to keep working his role with our team, he’ll find it, and he’s going to be a big part of our offense moving forward.
Can you ever remember returning a team as complete as this one?
No, I can’t say from both sides of it, the pitching side and the position side, where I’ve felt this way. The biggest thing is, and our guys have known since March, that if we’re going to come back and get back to where we want to be and where this program expects to be, even if you’re a returning starter, you’ve got to get better. We’ve got to continue to improve each day. Our guys have put the work in, we challenge them all the time about about trying to get better daily and we’re comfortable and happy with where we’re at from what we look like on paper, but again, paper doesn’t mean everything. It’s how you perform on tehf ield, it’s how you show up each day, the attitude you bring to the field. Ultimately, it’s your performance. Our guys have been through a lot of it, we’ve got some young guys I think are going to be able to to be a big contributor, but I’m going to lean on adn our program and staff will lean on some of these guys that have had some experience and had a taste of what college baseball is about.
On the process of bringing back the returning seniors
It was individual calls with each one of them. We talked just kind of what you’re thinking, what your thoughts are at points — especially when we heard about the Draft and when it became a five-round deal and how the free-agency stuff was going to work out.
In a normal year last year, we would have probably lost, instead of losing just Zarion, we probably would have lost five or six guys. I think three or four more would have been drafted in a 30-round draft and I think a few more guys would have been potentially picked up free-agent-wise because maybe the Minor Leagues didn’t do what eventually happened with the Minor Leagues, where things have gotten crazy and you’ve got less teams.
A few of them guys just wanted to wait and see how things played out. No one was really sure on how the Draft was going to work and what was going on, so several of them were still throwing all the way into June, hoping that if they got picked up, they’d go play Minor League Baseball because at that point, they didn’t know if the Minor League season was going to be on or cancelled. As it kind of kept moving forward and moving forward, I think conversations were like, ‘Hey, if this doesn’t happen, where are you at?’ They’d say, ‘Coach, I’m coming back if this doesn’t happen.’
I think when it all boiled down to it, you look at how things played out with the pro draft, you’ve got four guys here that wanted to continue to play college baseball and keep baseball moving in their life and finish out their career, hopefully, on the field the way they dreamed about being there. There was just a lot of different things in play … everybody was different and I’m just, again, I didn’t know if we were going to have nine guys back or four, and these four decided to come back to run it over gain and I’m happy to have them back.
I’m just as happy for the guys that made decisions to hang it up because it’s tough to do that. That’s a big-boy decision and those guys had to, at some point, make that decision and five of them decided to move on and start their lives. I’m just as proud of them because they’re going to be great in whatever they do, but from a baseball standpoint, from a UNCW standpoint, from a 2021 standpoint, I’m happy to have these guys back with us.