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(female announcer) This is a production of WKNO - Memphis.
Production funding for "Sports Files"
is made possible in part by..
My guest today on "Sports Files" is the head coach of the Memphis
Tigers Baseball team, Daron Schoenrock.
[theme music] ♪♪♪
The month of February may be the shortest
month on the calendar, but in the world of sports,
it's one of the busiest.
And that will continue into the month of March.
At the University of Memphis, the nationally ranked Tigers'
men's hoop team faces rival Louisville Saturday afternoon in
a clash of top 25 opponents.
Believe it or not, the Memphis football team has already opened
up spring camp.
And then there's the Tigers baseball squad,
who is off and rolling.
Memphis goes into their three game weekend series at FedEx
Park versus Southeast Missouri having won seven of their first
eight games, including a victory over then seventh ranked
Mississippi State on the road in Starkville.
Coach Daron Schoenrock says his team has one primary goal this
year and that's to make it into the post season.
And that won't be a picnic as Memphis has lost a huge hunk of
their starting pitching from a season ago,
and are now playing in a new conference with all together new
challenges.
Today, the man known affectionately as Coach Rock
joins me to talk about those new challenges,
and how he hopes his veteran players can lead the team into
the N-C-A-A Tournament.
That's next on "Sports Files."
[theme music] ♪♪♪
Rock, thanks so much for being with us.
Thanks, Greg.
Great to be here.
It's good to be talking baseball in February.
And you guys are off to a great start.
In the game of baseball, Rock, does it matter if you get off to
a quick start?
Is that always important in sports?
But with baseball, you play so many darn games and you want to
certainly be playing really well at the end.
So does it matter?
Well I think it matters in how you're playing.
You can have a veteran team and an older team and not play real
well and lose a couple of games.
You know you're not worried about it.
If you got a younger team, I think it's important that you
get some W's under your belt.
Now we've got somewhat of an experienced line up.
And we've played pretty well.
I don't think we've hit our stride offensively yet.
So there's still a lot of anticipation about what we can
become.
Alright.
How big is it for the team to go down to Starkville to beat the
number seven ranked Bulldogs?
And then how important was it for you personally having the
ties to Mississippi State?
That's always good.
You know, one -- it's a great environment and great venue to
play in and with the history and the tradition that they have,
all the players that have come through there.
So our new players get to experience that for the first
time.
And they did.
We had a lot of freshmen in the dugout.
That is their first taste.
But then I think the difference was we had enough guys on the
field that had been in that ballpark and won a game two
years previous.
And so it wasn't a big deal to play the game.
Now they were excited to win.
But experience played a huge factor in that game.
Well how much of a confidence booster is it for a team when
you have a top ten win already under your belt and we're still
in February?
Well that's, you know, with the pitching that we lost last year,
I think our older position players were kind of looking
around.
And they were confident in who they can be but they we're
trying to figure out okay, who's gonna take the mound for us.
Russ McNickle, my new pitching coach,
has done a phenomenal job putting a staff together that we
can piece a game up in to small parts and just pitch in to small
parts.
And now seven games in to it, they're kind of seeing that
unfold and they're excited about it.
Let's talk a little bit more about the pitching staff.
Obviously you have a pen that you can depend on.
You knew coming in you would have a pretty good shot with the
league getting in to the middle innings and the late innings.
But the question mark, of course,
was starting pitching because you lost your son.
You lost Sam Mole.
You lost some terrific starters.
So that was a huge challenge going in to the season.
Very big challenge.
And we tinkered with..
We kind of tinkered with things during the fall,
you know, which is kind of like a football spring practice of
guys -- some guys returning, stretching them out three and
four innings at a time to see how they responded.
And we came out with a senior in Jon Reed who's pitching on
Friday night who was basically out of the bull pin last year
for us.
A sophomore, Colin Lee, that had a couple of mid-week starts last
year.
And then a junior, Dylan Toscano,
on Sunday that had about two or three mid-week starts.
So none of the three starters really did much on the weekends
for us.
They were bull pen guys and mid-week starters.
And so you don't want to set their limits low but you say
give us 15 effective outs.
Get us to the fifth inning.
And we put some older guys and experienced guys in that
bullpen.
You know Blake Myers, Jacob Moody.
We've got Bryce Beeler functioning as a closer now.
Craig Caufield and then a freshman,
Nolan Blackwood.
There's five or six guys down there that have been very
effective in short spurts.
And all we've got to do is figure out how to take a lead
late.
So it's a lot of fun right now.
We will get to a point in time where those starters need to go
a little deeper because it's like in the big leagues.
You can start wearing your bullpin out because of the
repetitive multiple times on a weekend and frequency that these
guys pitch does take it's toll.
We've seen pitchers at every level.
Some pitchers go from starting to relieveing,
sometimes even going to become the closer.
We've also seen it flip-flopped where a closer or a short inning
guy ends up being a spot starter and sometimes even more than a
spot starter.
In your opinion, what is harder?
Start to reliever or reliever to starter?
I think at the college level, I think it's harder to find an
effective reliever because, you know,
95% of the guys we sign that we recruit and bring in all started
games in high school.
So they come in conditioned to start.
Their mind set is I know I'm going to pitch on Tuesday so I
can prepare to pitch Tuesday.
And then all of a sudden we go nope,
you're a reliever and I want you available Friday.
We don't use you.
We get you up.
Throw.
You don't bring it in.
Nope, we got to have you available Saturday.
So we kind of force feed that a little bit in the fall and then
in the pre-season of getting guys up and down then put them
in the game.
So figuring out how to become a reliever and keep your
effectiveness I think is a taller challenge.
And that's why you see so many college programs that have,
you know, inferior guys in the bull pen.
They may be quality pitchers but they're having a hard time
mentally and physically adjusting to that role.
That's an interesting point.
High schools normally don't have a closer per say.
They have guys that maybe they can depend on more as relievers.
But you're right.
Most of these guys have started at their respective prep school
and now they come to college.
And all of a sudden, you have to go with them and say listen,
I want to use you out of the pen.
That's a shock to the system to some.
The big difference to is a seven inning game.
You know they're playing a different game.
The last six outs of a nine inning game versus a seven
inning game are very difficult to get because hitters elevate
who they are.
That's when penship moves are made.
That's why you're starting to, you know,
do some trick stuff offensively if it's a close game.
So the bull pen guy has to handle a lot of different things
-- the running game, the stolen base game.
And those last six outs can be very difficult.
A good pitcher that's a Division I caliber pitcher in high
school, when they go out and pitch,
they go seven innings most of the time.
You know they're used to finishing the game.
So the bull pen is not as big a factor.
College baseball..
You know you hope you get..
Even as dominant as Sam and Eric were last year,
Eric had five complete games which was very rare,
very unusual.
Sam, you know, a very high pick, a third round pick,
maybe had two complete games, if that.
Maybe one.
So even the real effective guys aren't going C-Gs in college.
But the decision of the game is falling on the guys at the back
end of the bull pen.
Alright.
We talked about the challenges that you and your staff had
going in to the season with the pitching staff.
On the flip side, your every day players,
it's virtually the same team that's back.
How good is that?
How good a feeling to know that you can depend on these guys,
that they've all been through it and they're all gonna be back?
Well the huge thing, Greg, is our in-field is all back.
Tucker Tubbs is first.
Zach Willis is second.
Senior four year starter Ethan Gross is short.
And then a senior, Drew Griffin, at third.
Comfort in how you defend on the in-field.
You know we're playing a new guy in left named Kane Barrow,
a new guy in center, a freshman, Darien Tubbs,
and a returning outfielder in Rice.
Are the Tubbs related?
No, they're not related.
How unusual is that?
Very unusual.
But that comfort of a senior laden in-field,
that's huge.
And Tucker's the only junior playing.
Then both catchers are back, Carter White and Keaton
Aldridge.
So really I break a new pitching coach in to the pitcher-catcher
combo, which, you know, we've coached together before.
But defensively, there was no uncertainties.
And early in the season, if you defend the in-field and you
throw strikes, you're gonna be in every game.
Now can you beat bull pens.
And we've been able to come from behind in this seven game
stretch four times now.
So we've beaten some bull pens.
And it shows that our bull pen is holding it's own.
So yeah.
I expected those guys to be good on the in-field because they've
been around the block a few times.
And I kind of put the pressure on them early.
And Gross is the Cal Ripken is the University of Memphis Tigers
baseball.
Absolutley, great young man!
You know he's a combination between Derek Jeter and Cal
Ripken.
He got injected in to the starting line up at second base
when Chad Zurcher rolled an ankle.
And he started every game since.
We move..
And we eventually moved Zurch to second and put Ethan as short
second half his freshman year.
And his whole sophomore year and junior year,
he's never missed a day.
So..
And he's becoming more of an offensive catalyst now.
It was a defensive position obviously.
But you get that many at-bats on your belt.
And he'll get a chance to play at the next level.
There's a lot of scout interest in Ethan.
And he's the mainstay of our infield defensively.
Alright, we talked about the fast start you're out to this
season.
What are the expectations for your team?
Well you know we like to think that our league,
our new league we're in, the American,
can be a four-bid league and much like Conference U-S-A has
been, very similar.
There's not a lot of well-known what you call baseball schools
but there's some programs that have good baseball things going
on right now.
Louisville, coming off a college world series.
U-Conn was in a super regional two years in a row,
the year before last and the year before that.
Central Florida is up and coming.
South Florida.
Houston may have the best team in the league this year,
looking at pre-season things.
So the league's gonna provide post-season chances,
much like it's doing in basketball.
We just got to take care of business when we do match-up
with those.
And this team is built, you know,
with pitching and with defense and experience that can be a
regional team.
And that's the goal.
You get in to regional and anything can happen.
I can envision.
You know there's teams just like we are right now that end up in
Omaha every year that just get hot at the right time,
have enough senior leadership, stay healthy,
havea decent bullpen.
I think that's the biggest factor.
With just about every sport at Memphis,
the move from Conference U-S-A to the American was a step up.
You just talked about baseball.
Lousiville was in the College World Series.
But then again, Conference U-S-A had Rice and some great,
great teams.
So do you feel it's a step up?
Is it about equal?
Where do you feel it is as far as the level of competition in
this new conference as opposed to Conference U-S-A?
I think what you're gonna see when the dust settles on R-P-Is
this year, our league will have a higher R-P-I than Conference
U-S-A had last year.
Okay.
Because our bottom is gonna be stronger.
And you know top to bottom, it's a stronger league.
There's not a..
You know Rice has won a national championship,
16 N-C-A-A tournaments in a row.
There's not a team in our league like a Rice.
But top to bottom, we're better.
And looking at how our league is doing so far,
keep an eye on them.
You know Houston swept Michigan this weekend.
There's a lot of neat things going on that are gonna provide.
Once we start conference play, they're gonna provide a lot of
great R-P-I moments, R-P-I opportunities.
I feel like it's gonna be a stronger league,
top to bottom.
You talked about Connecticut a couple of years in the super
regional.
We know how cold it is in Connecticut.
We thought it was cold here in Memphis.
How hard is it for a school in a predominantly cold area of the
country to compete on an annual basis for the national title
when you have all these teams in the south or out in California
that can play baseball year-round outdoors?
One of the biggest differences you see is what..
When you're coaching at U-Conn, I talked to Jimmy Penders this
morning.
He's a good friend of mine that coached there.
You know when you block out your pre-season preperation and your
first four weekends of the year, you know you're going on the
road.
You know when you're at home, you're indoors.
So..
You're prepared.
You prepare your kids mentally.
Now the flipside of that it there's more schools in the
north now that are building huge indoor facilities.
They're preparing at a greater rate than they used to.
And the uniform start date now, everybody's gonna have the same
opportunity to get their 56 games in within the same
calendar date.
And that's a change the N-C-A-A made probably 10 years ago with
the uniform start date.
So now we all start at the same time.
There's no more, you know, the schools in Florida are opening
up in January and U-Conn waiting until the middle of March.
So they know they got to go on the road a lot early.
And the way the R-P-I formula works,
they were getting rewarded for going on the road.
So there's a lot of things that have created a better
opportunity for a northern school to win.
And it's still gonna come down to how well you're playing late
in the year.
And that's always, you know, a key.
But I think you're gonna see..
You're gonna see..
You saw Indiana make a college world series this year.
You saw Stony Brook, who was kind of a Cinderella,
you know, year before last.
I remember when Maine was good.
When Maine was very good!
And you know at that time when Maine was rolling back in the
'80s, they had one of the few indoor facilities with a huge
hitting facility.
So they weer able to prepare their hitters.
And then they would lead.
They would take out and go on a huge Florida trip and just stay
gone for two weeks and get a lot of games in.
Yeah, they'd be ready to go because of the indoor
facilities.
Let me make that segue to the facilities.
Over the last several years, we've seen the facilities get
better for Memphis baseball.
The creation of FedEx field.
It's a terrific place to play baseball at.
If I gave you carte blanche right now,
what other things would you like to see different or added or
renovated with Memphis baseball and the facilities?
Three things.
One is I want to eventaully increase this to a profit where
we have a seating problem.
Right now we've got a little
grandstand that has five- or six-hundred chairback seats.
And we're having some crowds that are challenging that number
right now.
And so I want to create a seating problem and that's
through schedule and how you're playing and what the weather's
like.
Okay.
Secondly, you know on the surface with the kind of cold
stuff we had this year, I would lean towards and a lot of people
are going towards field turf now.
They're field turfing the whole field.
There's four schools in our league that have the entire
field turf field -- Louisville, Tulane that is coming in the
league.
Houston is now gone to all-field turf.
U-Conn, Rutgers, they're all field turfs.
Do you know how expensive off the top of your head?
You know you're talking, uh, seven- to eight-hundred thousand
is what most of them are spending.
The plus of it is it can rain and 15 minutes later,
you're playing.
You can snow.
As soon as the snow melts, you're playing.
There's no drying the field or waiting a day or pulling the
tarp.
So you can play baseball.
Now you know obviously, I want to be on natural surface because
you got to go on the road with your team and function,
too.
Sometimes those coaches said they have a hard time adjusting
to the speed of the game on the road.
And then the other thing we're gonna do is we're gonna expand
to our building and build an office complex on to it and a
team meeting room, team meeting slash video room.
And the plans are already being drawn up for that.
Now that'll take place in this south campus facility
enhancement that Tom Bowen has launched now.
Adding on to our building is the first thing that's gonna happen.
I'll give you a sentence.
You complete it for me.
It will be a successful season for the Memphis Tigers Baseball
team if..
We make the post-season beyond conference tournament,
absolutely.
And then this team is built to that.
I'll be highly disappointed if we're not a regional team when
the dust settles.
Final moments here.
We know you had the big game down in Starkville.
What big games do you have coming up either at FedEx Field
or I believe you're back at Autozone Park as well as you've
had a few games annually there as well,
right?
Yeah, we have Ole Miss coming up there.
And there'll be a wide spread marketing campaign to really
pack Autozone Park out to that date.
And now that date is also..
That game is also included in our season ticket package.
Our new administration..
One of the neat things they've done is you buy a season ticket
to Tiger baseball now, the Autozone game is included in
that.
So and that's a very, very cost, you know,
efficient ticket.
So we got that huge game.
And then you know our first conference series coming up in
the middle of March to launch this thing.
You know we've got weekend opponents of schools coming from
the north.
We do make a trip to St. Louis to play St. Louis University,
which will be a unique thing -- a conference champion,
a regional team from last year, a home and home.
I went on the road and played Sanford.
I'm going on the road and playing some teams that won
their league last year.
You're giving this team challenges for the chance to win
those games, at least a bulk of them,
and as you say, accomplish the goal.
That's to get to post-season play.
That's to get to the N-C-A-A tournament.
And by the way, St. Louis, folks,
is a driveable distance to follow Memphis Tiger baseball.
Rock, it's always a pleasure.
Congratulations on the quick start to the season.
Hopefully that continues and we see you in post-season play.
Thanks so much Greg.
Thank you so much.
We'll take a short break.
Overtime is next.
[theme music] ♪♪♪
Three..
Two..
One..
[buzzer sounds]
The Mid-South Sports and Boat Show is a staple
in Memphis.
In fact, the 50th anniversary of the popular event was held
earlier in the month at the Agricenter.
The three-day event featured seminars and demonstrations from
some of the biggest names in fishing.
And on display were some incredible boats,
as well as other recreational vehicles such as A-T-V's,
ski doos and even golf carts.
Pro Fisherman Carl Graham, a well known name in the
Mid-South, was also on hand to lend his expertise.
And here's a little taste of what makes it such an
entertaining event.
♪♪♪
(male) Aren't you required to
make the 'vroom-vroom' noises while you sit there?
♪♪♪
Are you behind the boat today?
This one?
(female) Might be a little too little.
(male) Is this going to be your party barge?
(female) Say yes!
(male) What's your name?
Megan.
(male) What is it?
Megan.
(male) How old are you?
Three!
(male) Woo!
You've got a ways to go to get your license though,
don't you?
You like to fish?
You a good fisherman?
♪♪♪
(male) What is it that you're
trying to do for the kids today here at this event?
My number one objective is to make the fishing rodeos a lot
easier for these kids and also for the parents.
The wonderful thing that the parents will bring the kids out
to the fishing rodeos and giving out little tips like something
you can, you know, makes it real easy if you got a wagon.
Everybody likes to bring a nice, comfortable chair.
They can load all of their stuff in a little wagon or a thing you
use out in the garden and bring all that stuff down there.
And it's important to do a little practicing before you get
out there.
You're gonna mainly be fishing for catfish.
And I'm gonna tell a few tips on how to catch catfish.
And just trying to make it, you know,
easier.
And it's lots of fun.
Life is a collection of memories and I'm trying to help them make
a good memory.
(male) Are you looking for the
future professional fishermen out there?
Well really what I'm doing, I'm trying.
I'm so tickled pink that my father helped me years and got
me started when I was eight years old.
He took me brim fishing.
And it was just wonderful.
I got..
It lit a fire inside of me and I've loved fishing all of my
life.
And this is what I'd like to do for the -- that happen for the
youngsters.
And I'm trying to make it easier on the parents.
We're gonna be talking about how to tie knots.
And some of the parents are intimidated by,
you know, taking their kids fishing.
But what I'm trying to do is make it easier for everybody.
♪♪♪
(male) Is that catfish on a stick?
What do ya got there?
♪♪♪
Let me ask you a question.
Crappy tubes are $4.
How much do you get for the good ones?
Well that's not quite what you're looking at.
That's crappie -- not crappy, okay?
You know the French down in Louisiana call it sac-a-lait.
They're little nice, little fish.
They're very good table fare.
And they take smaller baits like this.
If we were to take a bass tube and try to catch a crappie,
we'd only catch a very few.
But with these, these are the good ones.
The inch and three-quarter tubes,
they are the good ones.
They'll catch you a boatload of crappie.
♪♪♪
(male) Got a question.
Does the camouflage really help you sneak up on the fish?
Is that the deal?
[laughter]
I would hope so but I don't think so.
♪♪♪
The Grizzlies are in the home stretch of the regular season
with only 26 games left to play.
Tony Allen has returned from injury to give the team a huge
boost off the bench and Marc Gasol and Mike Conley continue
to work themselves back from injuries,
slowly but surely returning to their usual selves.
Next up for the team is a game at Oklahoma City tomorrow night
before returning to the Grindhouse for a get together
with Cleveland Saturday evening.
And congratulations to former C-B-H-S prep All-American
Richard Mulrooney, who earlier this week was named the new head
coach of the University of Memphis men's soccer team.
Mulrooney starred at Creighton University before embarking on a
12-year professional career in the M-L-S.
One programming note to pass your way,
"Sports Files" will move from Thursday to Friday the next two
weeks to make room for our pledge drive.
The show will air at 7:30.
And that will do it for now.
Have a great week and we'll see you next time.
[theme music] ♪♪♪
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