Valley Baseball

Just some interesting things on Missouri Valley baseball.......and BU has a fine young team with potential....so I am hopeful of the future....

When Dewey Kalmer was BU's head coach - for many of those years the Valley was as high as the 6th or 7th best baseball conference in the nation and BU still did remarkably well many of those years. Now BU has had two of their most disappointing seasons back to back that we've had for a long time...while three Valley teams had fine seasons...

Wichita State as they often do, had a good year finishing as co-conference champ (15-6) and 40-20 overall.
But the real surprise was Illinois State. ISU was also co-conference champ at 15-6 and 32-24 but also had a nice run to the Tourney Champ and an NCAA berth. They just got knocked out this weekend, but they had a very successful year!
Indiana State also finished with an overall 35-19 record.
BU's record was 20-32.

But here's some info that most don't know...
Illinois State won with a FIRST YEAR head coach! Mark Kingston was hired by ISU on June 9, 2009 as head coach from his assistant coach spot that he had held just one year - having come from Tulane the year before.
Guess what...when BU was hiring for a head coach a couple years ago -- guess who was the top candidate?? Yup - Ken Kavanagh's top candidate was this very same Mark Kingston!! But KK wasn't able to "land Kingston" and the hire "went a different direction"...as one might say.

But there's even more to this story -- Kingston was well known to other people who are long time friends and legends at Bradley baseball like Ron Maestri, and came highly recommended by them as well...but "passed over" at Bradley as Elvis Dominguez was hired.

But there's even more...
Guess who else had a tremendous run in NCAA baseball and in the NCAA Tourney??
The Saint Louis Billikens had a fine late season run and also went to the NCAA Tourney, and their head coach of just a couple years, Darin Hendrickson, coming from Central Missouri. Hendrickson was another of the top candidates (of KK) for the BU job but his interview was squashed and he was dropped from the list of candidates, ahem, and if you want to know more, let me know...

Meanwhile FGCU was a Top 50 team this year (RPI 42) and had the National Player of the Year!!
http://www.fgcuathletics.com/mgolf/news/139/3383/
http://www.fgcuathletics.com/baseball/roster/108/885/

Bradley has potential and showed flashes of fine play, but needs to upgrade their schedule...
we went 20-32 against a slate that included some wins against non-D-I's and a fairly soft non-conference slate.
Elvis Dominguez's career record as head coach drops to 215-262-2, but as I said the team is young and BU is poised for a better year in 2011!