Until last Tuesday, Daron Schoenrock's most vivid memory of theMemphis Tigers baseball team involved a rodent and a power sourcelast April in Starkville, Miss.
"The second night (the Tigers) were there, a squirrel got in thepower lines," he said. "About the sixth or seventh inning, theplace just goes totally black. So we waited and waited, and wecouldn't get a repair truck there in time. It was going to take anhour and a half to fix, so we basically called it a game."
At the time, Schoenrock was an assistant coach at MississippiState. Now, as the newly appointed baseball coach for the MemphisTigers, he has a chance to replace that whimsical memory with moresubstantial ones.
But he certainly has some work to do.
The Tigers lost their starting shortstop and two pitchers to theamateur draft. Jarrett Grube, the team's most consistent starterlast year, was also drafted after his collegiate eligibility endedlast season.
The hole created in the pitching staff is the most urgent issueto address, Schoenrock said. He said he'll try to fill it duringthe late signing period with players who may have been overlookedin initial recruiting, as well as with Division I transfers.
"I think that's going to be a focus -- to drastically andrapidly improve the pitching as quickly as we can," Schoenrocksaid.
As an assistant, Schoenrock showed the ability to get the mostfrom a pitching staff. In his 20 coaching seasons -- all as anassistant -- he helped send 20 pitchers into the professionalranks. In 2004 alone, three Mississippi State pitchers were draftedin June.
Schoenrock spent three years in Starkville following asuccessful two-year stint at the University of Georgia, whichincluded a College World Series appearance in 2001.
However, Schoenrock knows pitching will be harder to come by inConference USA than it was in the SEC.
"I think the biggest difference you see day in and day out in anSEC team is the depth of pitching," he said. "The lineups of anupper echelon Conference USA team is very similar to a lineup of anSEC team. The difference might be in the fourth or fifthstarters.
"It is going to be a challenge. It's going to be a challenge forthe pitching coach I bring in."
Another challenge will be hiring that pitching coach -- and therest of Schoenrock's staff. The Athletic Department is in theprocess of taking applications for assistant coaches. Following theensuing interview process, the new coach will be united with a newstaff.
If the excitement around the assistant positions comparesfavorably with the response to the head coach position, thereshould be plenty of qualified candidates to choose from. AssociateAthletic Directors Bob Winn and Bill Lofton said the job receivedeven more interest than the recently filled women's basketballcoaching position.
Lofton estimated that 40 to 45 of the initial 80 plus men'sbaseball head coach applicants actually finished the applicationprocess.
"We were overwhelmed at the response we got to theadvertisement," Winn said. "We had more than 20 that we consideredreally strong candidates.
"We did not have a clue as to what kind of response we weregoing to get going into (the process). Obviously, over the last fewyears, the program has not had the great success it enjoyed in the'70s, '80s and even the early '90s, and so we weren't sure how manypeople were going to come after the position."
Of those 20 candidates, the committee settled on the top three:Dan O'Donnell from the University of Mississippi, Georgia's ButchThompson and Schoenrock.
From that point, the decision was actually easier.
"There was a committee of other people within the department aswell as University faculty (representatives)," Winn said."Everybody, basically almost like a jury, said nothing to theothers until we went through all three. Believe it or not, everysingle member ... had the (candidates) ranked in the exact sameorder."
Schoenrock replaces Dave Anderson, who guided the Tigers to a29-28 record in 2004. He is the 16th coach in the program'shistory.
