2022 baseball coaching search

The Wolverines made some news this Independence Day weekend, inking a new head coach in Tracy Smith: 

Tracy Smith Announced as Michigan Baseball Coachhttps://t.co/e1JRl6liwV #GoBlue pic.twitter.com/CHP0OMyw2k

— Michigan Baseball (@umichbaseball) July 3, 2022

This was a bit of a curveball, as Smith's name wasn't mentioned much at all during the search until the end. Rumors popped up that he had been interviewed, and within a day or so, he was the favorite. It wasn't long after that Smith was hired. 

In contrast to many of the coaches Michigan interviewed, Tracy Smith is older and grizzled. At age 56, he's seen his fair share of glories and failures, and the number of NCAA games coached by Smith dwarfed that of any other coach interviewed. Smith played college baseball at Miami (OH) in the mid-80s, then spent a few years in minor league baseball, before going into coaching. He returned to Miami to shadow for a couple seasons, then was an assistant at Indiana under Bob Morgan, before heading back to Miami to take the top job. Smith coached the RedHawks for nine seasons from 1997-2005, finishing every year with a winning conference record (and a winning record overall in all but one). Smith made the NCAA Tournament twice at Miami, in 2000 and 2005 after winning the MAC Tournament.

Following his stellar 2005 campaign (45-18), Smith was hired to return to Bloomington and coach the Hoosiers, after Bob Morgan's retirement. Indiana had trailed off in Morgan's later years, going 65-112 in the B1G over the final six years of his tenure. Smith was in charge of rebuilding the program and after a rough first few seasons, he built Indiana into a squad that generally was among the best in the conference. Smith's Hoosiers finished top five in the conference in five of his last six years at Indiana, including a 2nd, 1st, and 1st place finish in his final three seasons. He won two B1G regular season titles and two B1G Tournament titles in his nine seasons in Bloomington, the last two being particular highs. In 2013, he took Indiana to the College World Series, the first B1G team to do so since 1984, and in 2014 the Hoosiers were so good that they managed to be the #4 national seed (although they were heartbreakingly upset in the regional). 

[AFTER THE JUMP: More on Smith and some thoughts]

Michigan Baseball has been without a coach since since mid-June, when Erik Bakich was poached by Clemson. We covered that at the time and threw out a couple possible replacement candidates, but the search is now in full force and may be nearing a conclusion any day now. Some candidates have been interviewed but then pulled their names out of the hunt, while others are still vying for the gig. In this piece I'm going to run through the various names that have come up in reports (mostly those from Rivals' Brandon Justice) and evaluate their candidacy. 

The Top Dogs 

These are the names who have come up most often and seem to be the foremost contenders in the eyes of the decision makers, mainly Warde Manuel: 

Jordan Bischel, Central Michigan Head Coach. Bischel was a name I mentioned in my mailbag column right from the start because it seemed so obvious. In college sports, everyone is looking to hire 2005 Urban Meyer, the young, energetic coach who has won everywhere he's been and is ready to make the jump to a bigger program. Bischel fits that mold perfectly. He's just 41 years old (younger than Bakich) and won conference regular season/tournament titles at both NAIA Midland and D2 Northwood before moving up to CMU.

The Chips hadn't been to the NCAA Tourney since 1995 and had only won MAC regular season crowns intermittently before Bischel arrived. Since then, Bischel has transformed CMU into the class of the MAC, winning the regular season crown in 2019 and 2021, before finishing 2nd this year. He won the MAC Tournament in both 2019 and 2022 to qualify for the NCAAs, while earning an at-large bid in 2021. Thus, Bischel has made the NCAAs in every full season he has coached, and has compiled a 143-57 record at CMU (82-21 in the MAC). 

Bischel's track record speaks for itself, and Michigan should be familiar with him; it was Bischel's Chips who eliminated Bakich's Wolverines from the NCAA Tournament last year in the South Bend regional. Bischel is also attractive because he's a Midwestern coach. He's from Green Bay, attended college at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, and has been a head coach exclusively in Michigan. Obviously there are questions about Bischel's ability to recruit nationally the way that Bakich could, but the fact is that most of Michigan's best players under Bakich have been from the Midwest. In hiring Bischel, you'd have a coach prepared to navigate the realities of the Michigan Baseball program, and also someone with local roots to suggest he could be more keepable than Bakich, should he succeed. 

Bischel interviewed with both Ohio State and Kansas ($), but those schools went different directions. Right now, he seems to be the top candidate on Michigan's board, and he would be on my board as well. However, the fact that Michigan continues to interview other candidates leads me to think that the administration may not be completely sold on him. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: lots of assistant coaches]