STARKVILLE — John Cohen loves being Mississippi State’s Director of Athletics; he also knows it’s very different from being its baseball coach, and he’s not too proud to admit that.
He did just that as he recapped the search that ended with hiring Joe Moorhead as the football coach, letting it be known he talked to as many prominent names in college football as he possibly could. He did the same thing for baseball, but these conversations were different: these were conversations he would be having anyway.
“I know he’s an AD, but he’s probably more baseball guy than AD,” new MSU baseball coach Chris Lemonis said.
One of many reasons Lemonis was ultimately picked by Cohen and introduced Tuesday was those conversations that Cohen has often in the baseball community. Those were just part of the hiring process that Cohen described after the press conference.
“We never stopped talking, and that’s the interesting thing about this search: when you’re a college baseball coach for 25 years, I’ve been talking to Chris ever since we were recruiting against each other when I was at Kentucky and he was at Louisville,” Cohen said. “Some of the best conversations we’ve ever had are before the job opened up.
“When I had those conversations, Chris Lemonis’ name came up every single time.”
Cohen still followed the same course he did with the football search, gathering opinions and insight from people in and around the industry, but given his intimate knowledge, he did a lot of the work himself.
He said he started his process by listing all 297 Division I baseball programs; since he knew the head coach at most of those schools anyway, he was able to start his list from there and narrow it down as he went. Through his own qualifications, evaluating during the season and talking to trusted college baseball minds, he was able to get his first list down to 20 to 22 candidates.
From there, he was able to do two things: first, use the luxury of the months afforded him when he would normally have days, then take some of that extra time to gauge a candidate’s true competitive fire.
“To tell you the truth, I had to decipher between those people that were showing interest and people who, at some point, would like into the fire of the Southeastern Conference and say, “I’m up for this,'” Cohen said. “Most of the time you have a short window to evaluate people, I had an entire season to evaluate. I took a ton of notes, I talked to people.”
Through his conversations — national media members, NCAA selection committee chair and South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner, former Lemonis players and others — Lemonis’ name was a constant. Not only was his name consistent, so was one aspect of that feedback.
“Chris Lemonis is a recruiting machine. His recruiting prowess everywhere he’s been is the first thing (college baseball people) talk about,” Cohen said. “Chris was on my list from the very beginning because when I asked myself who is the best recruiter in Division I baseball, there was no doubt about that part.
“It’s hard to find someone who follows college baseball who is not a big fan of Chris Lemonis.”
Through the process of hiring, Cohen could not help but add another piece to it: helping the person he is replacing, Gary Henderson.
No one in the college baseball community envies the position Henderson was thrust into, named the interim coach of a team left in disgrace by Andy Cannizaro and in a disgrace of their own doing, an 0-3 record. The run to the College World Series only strengthened Cohen’s opinion of Henderson, an already overwhelmingly positive one formed by five years working together at Kentucky.
“I spent more time with Gary at the University of Kentucky than I spent with my wife and children, and I have nothing but positive things to say about Gary Henderson,” Cohen said. “When I was charged with making this decision and moving the program forward, I couldn’t let friendship, I couldn’t let anything interfere with the fact that we had to move this program forward for the next 10 years, and that’s what I was committed to doing.”
Part of that process was making sure Henderson knew where he stood every step of the way, which Henderson said he did. Cohen said he will help Henderson from here, be it with a job in the MSU athletic department or with help finding another coaching job if he wants it.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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