Indiana was becoming home for the Lemonis family, if it wasn’t already.
Chris Lemonis didn’t have his eyes peeled for other opportunities — until Mississippi State came calling.
“Indiana was great. Me and my family loved it,” Lemonis told Columbus Rotary Club members Tuesday at Lion Hills Center. “We were top 10 in the country for two months last year, had a really good team coming back, really comfortable in life. But like I joked earlier, I didn’t let (MSU Athletic Director) John (Cohen) get it out of his mouth. I’ll take it. There was no negotiating, nothing.
“… To have the opportunity to lead one of the top college baseball programs in the country is an honor,” he added.
Lemonis, a couple of weeks from wrapping up his first fall as Mississippi State’s baseball coach, outlined his vision for the program, which advanced to the national semifinals last season under interim head coach Gary Henderson.
“It’s a very fundamental style; we want to play solid defense,” Lemonis said. “I think pitching and defense is the key, that’s the biggest piece of getting to Omaha. Obviously I’m an offensive guy. I’ve had good offenses my entire career, but the basis of the program is pitching and defense. Hopefully you’re coming to see that product, especially as we recruit that product.”
The on-field product is being developed in what Lemonis is branding as the “Mississippi State way.” He described the philosophy with three lines in his presentation: no excuses, cut no corners, give our best effort.
Another part is toughness. Lemonis said he has a quote about toughness at the bottom of each day’s practice schedule and asks the players to memorize it. If one called-upon player can’t recite it, the team runs.
“We talk about the Mississippi State way with our kids. We talk about what toughness is,” Lemonis said. “We try to train for it a little bit in different ways.”
Lemonis wants his program to be about more than the on-field qualities. Starting with his time as an assistant coach at Louisville — the job that earned him the opportunity at Indiana — he set forth a system to get talented players to the minor leagues in three years and do so with a shot at a degree.
It starts with all incoming freshmen enrolling in summer courses before their first fall and little relenting from there.
“We take 15 hours a semester. I don’t let them drop and the goal is by the time they finish as a junior, they’re ready to go into professional baseball,” Lemonis said. “My ace at Indiana was in the fourth round, signed for a couple hundred thousand dollars, had one class left. That’s the home run.”
Working to that standard has been no easy matter. Lemonis joked, “It’s been a long three months, it feels like it’s been three years since John Cohen called and offered the job.”
But it’s also been the labor of love he signed up for. He still remembers the moment when he called his parents — his father is a MSU graduate — to tell him he was getting the job. He remembers them crying.
Recently, his mother gave him the cowbell they had when they were living in Starkville in the first years of Chris Lemonis’ life. It rests next to the trophy last year’s team got for making the College World Series.
Now he gets to work trying to recreate the moment.
“As a coach, that’s your goal: to see your guys in a dog pile,” he said.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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