STARKVILLE — The Louisville baseball program was left coming to grips with its jarring end in June of 2014. After sweeping through the Regional and Super Regional it hosted, it got to the College World Series just to lose its first two games and be sent home, two of its mere 17 losses coming at the worst possible time.
It also had to come to grips with Chris Lemonis, its star recruiter and top assistant coach, leaving the program for his first shot at a head coaching job. A mass text message to every player he coached to that point, thanking them for getting him the opportunity of a head-coaching job, soothed any shock.
“The job he just got, I think people around the country recognize what kind of person he is and that’s being rewarded right now,” Cole Sturgeon, who ended his Louisville career on that 2014 team, told The Dispatch.
Sturgeon’s appraisal of playing for Lemonis is a common one, and one Mississippi State hopes to soon enjoy. MSU named Lemonis its next head baseball coach Tuesday morning, getting a coach with a knack for developing deeper relationships with players despite a coaching style that isn’t always soft.
“When you’re a young kid and you’re learning, you’re making those mistakes, he’s very tough on you, but he’s also the first one there when you do something right or to help you when you make an adjustment,” Sturgeon said. “It was fun to be there for all four years and see how our relationship grew as I got older and my whole class got older.
“He’s very tough, especially when you’re a young player, but once you get past that, he genuinely cares about every one of his players. I still hear from him once or twice a year, through it all.”
When Sturgeon, who is now with the Pawtucket Red Sox in Triple-A, does hear from Lemonis, it’s always wishing him the best of luck and offering his input should Sturgeon ever need it.
He credits Lemonis’ input for getting him as high as he is, evidenced by his college production: he led that 2014 team with a .323 batting average to go with 16 doubles, all while balancing 25 pitching appearances with a 1.98 earned run average.
Lemonis honed this approach over a total of 20 seasons as an assistant coach, 12 at his alma mater of The Citadel before eight at Louisville. The approach is a simple one.
“The best way I can describe him is mentality,” Sturgeon said. “A lot of times people think mechanical, but he’s more of a mentality, attitude and get you in the right mind to play every day. I think it pays off in college but even more so at the next level, that toughness in the grind you go through , it gets you ready for it without knowing it at the time.”
It rings a bell to how Jake Gautreau, a MSU assistant who will be retained by Lemonis, approached MSU hitters when he took over as hitting coach after Andy Cannizaro’s resignation. His focus was on approach and being stubborn within that approach, trusting it to work when it needs to; upon hearing that, Sturgeon expected the two to be a good fit for each other.
They should also bond over the anticipated results.
“I think Lem is a winner, first of all,” Teddy Cahill, a national college baseball writer for Baseball America, told The Dispatch. “He won at Louisville, he won as a player at The Citadel and obviously he won with Indiana.”
To date, that winning has come with a trademark style.
“They’re ultra-aggressive, ultra-competitive. Every time you step on the field, win or lose, the other guys better walk away saying, ‘Those guys play hard,'” Sturgeon said. “It’s nonstop, 100 percent, more so mentally and I think it pays off physically.”
Cahill saw the same thing, considering it a, “fair characterization,” that Lemonis’ teams did their best to take the action to their opponents.
One constant has remained through Lemonis’ career: he has had the high talent level needed to dedicate oneself to constant aggression. Cahill said Baseball America started ranking recruiting class around 2001 and Louisville did not have a top 25 class before Lemonis’ arrival in 2007; in Lemonis’ eight years as a Cardinal, Louisville had five such classes.
He doesn’t stop once the talent gets in his hands.
“He loves to win, that’s what it’s about,” Sturgeon said. “He has higher expectations for you than you have for yourself and his biggest thing is bringing that out in each of those players.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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