STARKVILLE — The events of the coming days had no impact on Tanner Poole as he sat hunched in a padded folding chair, occupying a locker in a baseball clubhouse for the final time. Yet he shared his opinion on the impending events, mere minutes after his college baseball career ended in the College World Series.
Poole hoped Gary Henderson would be Mississippi State’s next head baseball coach.
Poole and others did not get that wish, as MSU named Chris Lemonis to that position. Unless Lemonis offers a position on his staff and Henderson accepts it, an unlikely occurrence, it means the end of Henderson’s time coaching MSU, although Director of Athletics John Cohen would have him in the department elsewhere if he’d like. That fact doesn’t change the opinion of those that played for him as an interim.
“When we figured out Gary was going to be our coach, he was our guy and we were going to stick with him through thick and thin,” Poole told The Dispatch. “That’s what we did and that’s why we’re here.
“Gary’s been doing it a long time and I feel like this season helped motivate him. It clicked together, I feel like it’s a special fit.”
Henderson felt the same thing with his group.
“What a close group they were, how competitive they were, how much they cared about each other,” Henderson said. “In a lot of ways, it’s been unbelievably rewarding.
“We were humiliated early in the year, I’ve said it before and I meant it. That was hard. You find yourself really challenged in life, you turn to those that are closest to you and make something of where you are. Those kids did, their families did and their coaches did. It’s been rewarding, it’s been fun.”
Henderson told The Dispatch after the game that he had no idea what the days after the loss would hold, but that all of his conversations with Cohen throughout the season were, “very direct and very respectful.”
Henderson cited his years of working with Cohen: first as his assistant at Kentucky before taking over the Wildcats in his wake, then coming to MSU to be his pitching coach before Cohen became the athletic director.
Cohen would love for Henderson to have a role somewhere in his athletic department, but a season like the one that just ended is certain to pique interest in Henderson elsewhere.
“I think people understood what Gary Henderson was all about before this,” Teddy Cahill, national college baseball writer for Baseball America, told The Dispatch. “I think this season only enhanced what people thought about him, and people always liked him. He’s very thoughtful, considerate and does things the right way, and all of those are traits that endear you to your peers. I think they wanted to see him have success and he did, and I think people were appreciative of that.
“They also responded to the passion that he was showing, because that’s not something he’s always showed.”
Cahill sees the market for Henderson as a complicated one. Henderson is clearly reenergized by the events of the season and his role in them, and his extensive Southeastern Conference experience makes him a prime commodity on the open market. If he wishes to go back to being a pitching coach, he will certainly have plenty of opportunities to do so, Cahill said, but added the College World Series run he led is likely to weight heavily on an athletic director’s mind someday soon, whether that is this summer or next.
As he leaves the program for whatever is next, the players leaving at the same time feel he leaves it better than he found it.
“I feel like it has a good foundation. No matter what happens after I leave,” starting pitcher Konnor Pilkington said, “I know Mississippi State is going to be in great hands.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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