John Cohen Will Find The Right Coach To Lead Mississippi State Baseball
By Ethan Lee
Mississippi State baseball needs a coach. John Cohen will find the right one for the Bulldogs.
The Mississippi State baseball team needs a new head coach. Yes, Gary Henderson has saved this season for the Bulldogs, but it looks like MSU’s athletic director and former head baseball coach is looking for someone else to lead the baseball team in the future.
Back in February, after Andy Cannizaro was sent packing, Cohen addressed the issue but mentioned the possibility of many head coaches wanting to be in Starkville to coach the Mississippi State baseball team.
He’s almost certainly right in that statement. Recently, rumors started surfacing about TCU’s Jim Schlossngale. And, as rumors became more prevalent, Schlossnagle addressed them, but he never stated that he’d say no to the possibility. A coach of Schlossnagle’s pedigree has to be one that Mississippi State would want in Starkville going forward.
Since 2004, Jim Schlossnagle has been coaching the TCU Horned Frogs. In that timeframe, TCU has been to a NCAA Regional infall but two years. They’ve made it to Omaha to compete in the College World Series a total of five times. Four of those five trips to the CWS came in the past five years.
This is the type of coach that should be pursued by any college baseball program. This is the type of coach that should be sought after by the best college baseball programs in the country.
But, what if it isn’t Schlossnagle?
The Bulldogs will still certainly have plenty of options out there.
Yes, it’d be great to get a coach with a resume like Schlossnagle’s. However, that doesn’t mean that he’s the only good coach out there for MSU to try and court to Starkville. There’s little reason to doubt the fact that John Cohen will find the right coach for the future of the Mississippi State baseball program.
When he hired Andy Cannizaro, things felt right. In his first season as Mississippi State’s head coach, Cannizaro led MSU to a 40-27 record overall and a 17-13 record in SEC play. That’s with a multitude of injuries plaguing his team.
And Cannizaro would have had a chance to continue coaching MSU. That is up until things went sideways off the field, leading to a resignation from Cannizaro himself.
But still, at that time, the hire was a good one and appeared like it would pay off for years to come in the future. John Cohen’s most recent hire, Joe Moorhead, also appears to be a notably great hire and one that will pay off in the future. All Moorhead has to do is continue improving Mississippi State’s culture, strive for championships, and then stay clean when off the field.
And even if Mississippi State can’t get Jim Schlossnagle, the Bulldogs are in a position to hire a great coach. The New Dudy Noble Field will be complete by next season and is going to be one of, if not the single most impressive college baseball field’s in America.
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It’s also important to remember that there are plenty of other coaches out there with a great resume. Schlossnagle isn’t the only coach that John Cohen would consider here. There’s no way. With how quickly Cohen had everything lined up with Joe Moorhead, expect things to fall in place nicely with MSU’s next head coach.