There's smoke rising from the grills of the Left Field Lounge at Dudy Noble Field, and it signals that a new leader of the Diamond Dawgs has been selected. Mississippi State baseball has officially hired former Virginia skipper Brian O'Connor to be the ninth head coach in program history.
Brian O'Connor has been one of the very best coaches in college baseball over the last two decades. He built the Virginia program up from practically nothing, turning them into a consistent winner and one of the sports' top programs.
Since his first season in 2004, Brian O'Connor took UVA to 18 regionals, advancing to super regionals in nine of those postseason appearances. The Wahoos took home the ACC regular season title in 2010 and 2011, capturing the conference tournament crown in 2009 and 2011. And seven times his program has made it to Omaha. In 2014, his Cavaliers reached the College World Series finals. Then in 2015, they broke through to win the national championship, the only ACC team to win the title since 1955.
A five-time ACC Coach of the Year and 2015 National Coach of the Year, O'Connor has already put together a Hall of Fame career in Charlottesville. Now, he gets the opportunity to lead one of the most storied programs in college baseball in the nation's best venue in front of the nation's most passionate fanbase. And with the resources Mississippi State is devoted to putting forth into baseball, there's no reason to expect anything other than for Brian O'Connor to flourish in Starkville.
Brian O'Connor is the most impressive hire in Mississippi State athletics history
At the start of this coaching search, all indications were that Mississippi State was fully committed to making a high-level hire and assuring its baseball program solidify itself as a regular title contender. Even knowing that, managing to hire Brian O'Connor away from Virginia is multiple tiers above what could have been reasonably expected.
To land a sitting, national championship-winning head coach from a power conference program where he had been fully established for more than two decades is unprecedented. Previous attention-grabbing Bulldog hires of Jackie Sherrill, Ben Howland, and Mike Leach were all incredibly strong moves, but they did not match the resume that O'Connor has coming in.
And to do it just year after conference foe Texas A&M, with all the money they have to offer, tried and failed to land O'Connor makes the job done by Zac Selmon and the MSU administration all the more impressive. They set out to bring a winner to Starkville, and they quite literally could not have done better. If we're describing the hire with college baseball lingo, this is a walk-off grand slam in game three of a national title series in Omaha. State fans should be thrilled with their current leadership.
And of course they should be thrilled with the future of the Diamond Dawg program. Mississippi State has taken baseball incredibly seriously for decades, long before the rest of the SEC chose to follow suit. As a result, some fantastic coaches have come through the program, with some great hires being made in the years following the Godfather Ron Polk's establishing of Dudy Noble Field as hallowed ground. But no hire jumps off the page like this. A proven, elite head coach is now in charge, and fun times are ahead for the Bulldogs.