How close is Tech baseball to competing in C-USA?

RUSTON – Greg Goff went through a weekly routine during his first year as Louisiana Tech’s baseball coach.

Win or lose, Goff and his coaching staff would evaluate the Bulldogs every Monday during the season to see how close they were to competing in Conference USA.

Goff’s findings were promising, but after a last-place finish and a 25-27 mark in 2015 — a 10-win improvement from 2014 — just how close is Tech to competing in C-USA?

“The two other programs I took over — Motevallo and Campbell — I felt like were not as close,” Goff said earlier this week. “I thought going through this year in Conference USA, I really felt like with a couple of good recruiting classes that we should be right up there near the top.

“I’ll probably shoot myself in the foot by saying that.”

Goff needed three years at Montevallo to turn the program around when he won 43 games in 2006 and took the Falcons to the Division II World Series.

Campbell took even longer as Goff averaged just 23 wins in his first four years before leading the Fighting Camels to 41 wins and a second-place league finish in 2012.

Two factors — the Conference USA arms race and the fact that Tech lost 15 games by two runs or less — has Goff optimistic for 2016.

“Seeing the teams we played in Conference USA this year, which was a really good league — there’s three teams (Rice, FAU and FIU) that got NCAA bids — I didn’t feel like we were that far away talent-wise with the team we had this year,” he said.

“If we can build off (2015) and bring in our recruiting class, I don’t think it’s going to be that long before we catch the people we need to catch.”

Tech replaces 12 seniors from 2015 with a 21-man recruiting class, a majority of which are from the junior college ranks, and has a core group of players returning.

Second baseman Taylor Love, who led the team in hitting, shortstop Chandler Hall, center fielder Bryce Stark and catcher Brent Diaz, who earned C-USA all-freshmen honors, all return for the Bulldogs.

The four-some helped Tech raise its batting average 11 points and score more than 100 runs from a 2014 squad that went 15-35 in Wade Simoneaux’s final year.

Their jobs are hardly safe, however, with the addition of several JUCO players who are ready to start right away.

“I’m not going to be able to go through another year like we did. I want to win, and the way you do that is bring in guys that have been playing the last two years,” Goff said.

“This fall is going to be very competitive. This year, we didn’t have a lot of depth. It’s going to be a fun fall to see the amount of talent we have our there.”

The one way Goff knows how to fix that is via junior college transfers. It’s something Goff used to win at Montevallo and Campbell, so there’s no point changing it.

“We’ve been able to turn two programs around. The way you do that is bring in guys that have played,” he said. “You saw the people in our league that were very good. They were veteran clubs — Southern Miss, Rice, all those guys — they had upperclassmen in their rosters. To combat that, we want to try and bring in some junior college kids the first year to try to jumpstart where we need to be.”

Goff might go JUCO again the following year, but the hope is to have “80 percent” high school players in two years.

Tech’s recruiting priority easily was focused on pitching, particularly staffing the bullpen with quality arms.

“I felt a lot of games this year we lost the lead or lost the game in the five through seven, five through eight innings,” Goff said. “That’s where our big emphasis was bringing in pitchers to be able to bridge the gap between our starters and our closer.”

One of the incoming arms has a local tie. Former Sterlington pitcher Casey Sutton signed with Tech last fall after spending two years at Hinds Community College.

Sutton is one of five Hinds players coming to Tech this summer, including the Washam brothers — Jonathan and Jordan — from OCS. Hinds lost in the NJCAA national championship game in 2014 and spent most of the 2015 season as the No. 1 ranked team in the country.

“I like recruiting from winning programs,” Goff said. “I want to be able to recruit junior college players that are smart, have a 3.0 or better and that come from winning programs.”

Connect with Sean Isabella on Twitter at ST_IsabellaTNS