Exclusive Q&A with new Southeast Missouri State baseball coach Andy Sawyers

Andy Sawyers was announced as the newest head baseball coach at Southeast Missouri State on Friday and officially introduced to the public on Monday. Coming off two years as an assistant at Kansas State, this is Sawyers first Division I head coaching job, though he did head up Hutchinson (Kans.) Community College earlier in his career. He takes over a program that is coming off an NCAA Regional appearance under Steve Bieser, who stepped down to take the head job at Missouri in June. Sawyers sat down with the Southeast Missourian on Tuesday to talk about his experiences and making things work in Cape Girardeau. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: How would you describe how you're feeling at this point, the first day after you were introduced?

A: Excited. You know, yesterday was a day of meeting a lot of people. Had a chance to meet a lot of folks in the athletic department and a lot of supporters of the program at the press conference and then there was a reception last night, so that was fun just to meet the people. When you look at a place that people have a lot of pride in, that pride is obviously evident in the passion of the people who are around it and it was fun to meet everybody and listen to them tell stories about their experience, you know, 'I played at SEMO and I went to school here,' so it was just fun to meet everybody and hear their stories and get to know them a little bit.

Q: What was your first impression when you saw the campus and everything last week?

A: I thought the campus was beautiful. I'm from Northern California, so I'm used to mountains and trees. I've lived in Nebraska and Kansas, so there's not a lot of mountains and not a lot of trees. When I pulled into town it was dark. When I came down for my interview it was dark when I got into town, but the next day as we drove around campus and Brady showed me the campus and Nate [Saverino, Assistant Athletic Director for External Affairs] drove me around and we looked at some neighborhoods and stuff like that I was really struck by how beautiful it was and all the trees. It was a very attractive community.

Q: This is not your first head coaching position, so what did you learn or take away from your two years at Hutchinson Community College?

A: Well, I was named the head coach at Hutchinson when I was 25 years old and so I was a pup and I was long on enthusiasm and long on energy and maybe short on restraint. I thought we coached really well. I was young and energetic and the mistakes I made were usually mistakes of aggression and getting after it. But the thing that I really learned at Hutchinson was just the power of delegating and having to trust the people you work with. When I became the head coach I was 25 and I think I tried to coach every position on the field, every player, every day. I'd been the volunteer assistant for a couple of years and was really excited about this opportunity at Hutch and I attacked everything at once. ... I had great assistants. One of my assistants is the head coach at Navarro College down in Texas right now, and he's got one of our incoming guys, Alex Samples. He was his head coach in junior college. My other assistant is the head coach at the University of Central Missouri, a Division II powerhouse in the state. Those were my two assistants, so I had great assistants, but I don't think I did a good enough job of letting them work and trusting their expertise and their experience, so that was a lesson I learned of things I need to do better.

Q: Who that you've worked with has impacted you the most and how?

A: You know, I've worked for three current SEC head coaches and I've worked for three Big 12 Coach of the Years, so I've been around some awesome, awesome men in our industry and I've taken things from all of them. Probably the biggest impact that has been on me is Rob Childress at Texas A&M. The thing that is ingrained in my soul with Rob is just how to treat people, and Rob is amazing at treating every human being he comes into contact with respect and dignity, and he's a tough man. Like he gets after his guys. I was there five years and we were hard-charged and we got after it, but we always treated every person with respect and with dignity and when people ask about Rob I say that he is the best man that I know. I think if you start there, if you start with how you treat people and how you interact with people we can figure the baseball part out. It's not rocket science, I always say. But if you start from a place of treating people well and respect and dignity and giving people the benefit of the doubt and giving people your time and your attention, I think that the relationships you form and things of that nature are going to carry you through the inevitable ups and downs of athletics. I would say he's probably been my biggest influence.

Q: With your SEC experience, what do you think it takes for a school at SEMO's level to close the gap with the high majors and compete nationally?

A: I think the job that has been done by the previous coaching staff, I mean, what an amazing job. The wins and the caliber of players that are here -- it's really, really good. The thing that's different about the SEC that most folks don't know is the amount of depth that they have. If you look at the Southeastern Conference, historically these are states and schools that came from areas that are educationally and economically depressed or deprived. We're talking about the South coming out of the Reconstruction. So a lot of those major state schools have programs in place to help people go to college, and so those programs -- and we're talking about TOPS in Louisiana and the lottery money in South Carolina and Florida and things of that nature -- I guess what I'm saying is people in the SEC aren't playing with just 11.7 scholarships. They have a great deal of, we call them, non-countable aid. Other schools in other parts of the country have that as well, but the SEC for the most part has got a lot of it and so they've got this giant of all the schools have invested in major facilities and they have great coaches and they're paying them well, and then they might have a little bit bigger salary cap than the rest of us, so that's a challenge. I think one thing is really exploring creative ways to increase our salary cap and make sure that we're not playing with just 11.7, that we can maximize what we have in terms of non-countable aid to make our salary cap a little bigger.

The second thing is, I think from an offensive standpoint we're playing at better than an Ohio Valley level at this point. The offense is fantastic and the work that's been done is really, really good. It's not to say that we don't have good pitching because obviously we do, we had the pitcher of the year on our staff last year, but what I'm talking about is the depth. The depth and the breadth of the arms. And that's really, really hard for any mid-major to accomplish, so for us to close the gap and compete it's going to really have to be with the depth and the breadth of the pitching that we recruit.

Q: You mentioned the offense -- what type of offense do you like? And part of SEMO's success has stemmed from their pitch-recognition program, so do you have any experience with that sort of technology?

A: Dealing with the pitch recognition first -- the guy who developed that is actually a semi-personal friend of mine, Peter Fadde. Peter's son was my video coordinator at Texas A&M, his name's Jay. Jay obviously wasn't doing what his dad did, but Jay and I kind of dabbled with that at Texas A&M. Didn't have the whole system and didn't get it implemented, but from the outside looking in I had the ability to have an understanding of what they were doing and understanding that it was working, so I couldn't give you all the details on what Peter was doing here at SEMO with Coach Bieser and his staff, but I do know that I'm familiar with Peter and I know it was working.

The day I was announced Peter texted me and he's like, 'How you doing, Andy? I'm excited for you,' and I said, 'Hey, man, we need to talk as soon as possible.' He said, 'As soon as you slow down, call me and we'll get you the information on what we're doing.' I think that that is something that should be very easy for us to transition. Coach Bieser and his staff were doing it like this and we're going to make sure we maintain this.

In terms of what kind of offense that I prefer, really you have to adapt to the personnel you have. The one thing that last year's team had, from the outside looking in, of course -- I haven't had a chance to be around the personnel and watch them work -- it was more of a, 'We're going to stand up and hit,' rather than a short-game, small-ball type of approach. I don't like the term small ball ... We want to play for big innings and we want the ability to drive the baseball, but one thing we've always done a good job of is we talk to our guys that we want to apply pressure in every way we can apply pressure. So the easiest way to apply pressure is obviously in the box. If we've got strong, aggressive, confident hitters in the box taking big swings, we're going to apply pressure right there.

One thing that we will at least try to do, and again it's depending on personnel and adapting to them, but we've always had very good luck with we green light everybody and then we try to teach them what that means to them. ... But we do want to be aggressive with our legs. We want to be aggressive in the box, aggressive with our legs, we want to be aggressive with skill.

Q: How do you go about evaluating the players that are already on the roster at this point?

A: You know, it's hard. Obviously I've gone through the stats and we had a lot of guys with good years last year, so it's great to see. ... I talked to our closer last year, Justin Murphy, and I was like, 'Hey, man, you're our closer. That's great.' And he was like, 'Coach, I really would like to have a chance to start.' And I'm like, 'Well, great. Here's the good news -- it's a clean slate for me.' That can be good and bad. Not bad, but it's going to take us awhile to figure out who's who and what's what on the field, but also good. You might have a guy that wants a different role. ... They're all a clean slate with me. We'll have a chance to evaluate them as best we can once the fall starts and let the chips fall where they may and see where they land.

Q: What's the message to the players as you speak to them individually now and also when you get them all together in the fall?

A: My message to them is, 'We're going to be good and you guys are our guys.' It's not a, 'Wait until I can recruit my style of player.' No, you guys won, we're winning. I'm not going to change. I'm not going to go recruit different. You guys are already winning. I trust that you guys are winners. I trust you guys are going to give great effort. And we're going to be good. So I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and I hope when they arrive and things are going to be different -- just because I'm not Steve Bieser, I can't run the program the exact same way he did, so there are going to be some differences but I'd like for them to give us the benefit of the doubt as well and know that we're working towards the common good.

In terms of adjusting, I've had some pretty good success in my first years. My first year at Hutch junior college we won the league. My first year at Kansas State was the first regional appearance in school history and set 14 school records. My first year at Texas A&M as the associate head coach we went to Omaha. So I've been fortunate. I've stepped into some situations with good players and that attitude that I've taken has enabled us to have success and not go through a transitionary period where we have to get it straight.

Q: What are some of the places you've recruited the most throughout your career?

A: Obviously at Nebraska our plan was to dominate the state of Nebraska and then the states that bordered us. That was the plan. The best team in school history, for example, at the University of Nebraska, it was a 57-win team that went to Omaha and won a game in Omaha. That team every starter was from Nebraska or a state that borders it. Our starting catcher was Lincoln, Nebraska. Our first baseman was Lawrence, Kansas. We would platoon two second baseman -- one was from Omaha, one was from Denver. Our shortstop was St. Louis, Missouri -- Joe Simokaitis, St. Mary's High School. Our third baseman, Alex Gordon of the Royals. In the outfield it was Denver, Lincoln, Omaha, across the outfield. Then on the mound it was Joba Chamberlain, who was with the Yankees and the Tigers. We had a guy named Brian Duensing, who is still pitching in the Baltimore Orioles bullpen. We had Zach Kroenke who made it to the big leagues with the Diamondbacks; he was out of Omaha. Our closer was from Eagle Grove, Iowa. We have a kid who's still in the bullpen who has been an All Star -- Tony Watson, he's in the Pirates' bullpen still a decade later. He was from Dallas Center-Grimes in Iowa. We had a great team with a lot of big leaguers and it was the upper part of the Midwest, so really my heart has always been the upper part of the Midwest.

But where do you go when you can't fill your team? Obviously the state of Texas is a big draw and I spent five total years at Texas A&M, which is basically in the middle of Dallas and Houston, so I've got experience both recruiting Dallas and Houston. The state of Arizona was very good to us when I was at Kansas State. Arizona's got maybe not a huge population, but Phoenix is a city of multiple million people with three Division I schools in the state, so they have a lot of very good baseball. They have very good weather for baseball as well. ... Then California obviously has a lot of good players.

Q: Do you have experience with the St. Louis area as well?

A: Very much so. I've got a couple of guys out of St. Louis committed to Kansas State right now. The absolute team leader of the best team in school history at Nebraska was not Alex Gordon. Alex was the best player. He didn't run the team. The kid who ran the team was this dirtbag, scrapper shortstop from St. Louis, Joe Simokaitis, who's been a high school coach in St. Louis as well. He was the coach at St. Mary's for a couple years after he was done playing. We've had good luck recruiting St. Louis. St. Louis is a really good baseball town. It's interesting because a lot of places have reach to St. Louis, so the kids don't all just go to one place. I think that's going to be Coach Bieser's challenge at Mizzou, is to collect the best players in Missouri at Mizzou. Because I've often felt that Missouri is a great baseball state, but the kids just don't get collected in one place. When we were at Nebraska it was easy to collect the best players in Nebraska at Nebraska. They all wanted to wear red. But St. Louis kids, man, they'll go to Ole Miss, they'll go to Arkansas, they move around. They don't all just stay, so I think that that makes recruiting St. Louis a little bit of a challenge because those kids get recruited a lot of different directions, but I think it's a really good baseball town, I've had success recruiting there and I want to see if we can do some damage there at SEMO.

Q: What's your experience with the Southeast Missouri area recruiting-wise?

A: Believe it or not, I think that Southeast Missouri is a really underrated baseball place because I think Southeast Missouri reminds me a lot of the eastern half of Oklahoma, which I have recruited a lot. You get these small towns, so maybe kids don't get marketed or recruited as heavily, but they play a lot of baseball. They're still playing American Legion, they're still playing town ball -- they're doing these things and there's good players, they're just not going on the showcase circuit, you're not seeing them at these huge showcase events in St. Louis and Kansas City, so you have to work a little bit harder. You can't just go to one event and see everybody, you're going to have to go to a Legion game. You're going to have to go to a Legion game in Poplar Bluff. You're going to have to go to a Legion game in Pocahontas, Arkansas. You're going to have to go to these Legion games in that area kind of North Arkansas, southern Missouri. These kids maybe just don't do these type of things, but they're still these really good players. You just have to get out and beat the bushes to find them.

Q: Do you anticipate having to scramble and put together a signing class for the Early Signing Period in November?

A: I was just talking with Matt [Borgschulte] about that, about the state of the roster and what we needed to add, and yes, we're probably going to anticipate adding at least one, maybe a couple new players. And I think that Coach Bieser was in that process when he left, obviously. I know Matt has worked his fanny off all summer trying to finish that up, but that's a little bit hard when there's not a head coach in place. Players have a little bit of a difficulty committing to go to a place where they don't know who the staff is going to be. On my drive over Sunday night I had two different junior college coaches reach out to me saying I've got a guy available if you guys are still looking, so I think we'll probably add at least one arm, maybe two.

Q: You've been to the College World Series a couple of times. How would you describe that experience?

A: It's incredibly fun for the players and the coaches. It's also a little bit draining. It's so big compared to what you're used to. Even in the SEC if you're playing in front of 7,000, now you're playing in front of 30,000 people. The demands on your team are immense because everybody's family goes, right? Like moms and dads and grandmas and cousins. So you've got your entire family there and you're playing every other day, so you're mom's like, 'Let's do this.' If you play on Saturday and Monday, well, you're mom's going to want to plan something on Sunday and you're going to want to do something as a team and we're going to want to work out and it can get actually really busy. I kept kind of a journal the last time I was there of kind of like notes to myself if I get back here as a head coach, and the No. 1 thing you're going to have to do is defend your time and defend the team a little bit to make sure your experience is about the team and going to be able to win.

Q: What do you think about Coastal Carolina, a mid-major, winning the national championship this year?

A: Baseball is the one sport where -- I know Butler had a good run in the basketball tournament a couple years back and I think basketball can be done a little bit -- but I think baseball's the one sport where it actually can be done, where the mid-major school [can win]. Now, Coastal's got some pretty significant resources. I don't know if you've ever seen their facility and stuff like that, but they're not roughing it, I'll say that. But baseball is the sport where the Kent State's of the world and the Stoney Brook's and the Santa Barbara's they can do it. They can get there because the restrictions we have on scholarships, the 11.7, and the minimum of 25. Yes, SEC has an advantage with non-accountable aid and things of that nature, but they just can't stockpile everybody and so we all have a chance. And in baseball if you can get hot on the mound you can beat anybody. When you look at Coastal Carolina was a very offensive team, a lot of home runs, but they also got hot on the mound and had some really good starts in a row from their guys. As long as you give yourself the chance, you never know. Obviously it's not going to happen every year and talent usually wins out -- we had the run of SEC champions -- but there's also schools like Kent State who got there and Santa Barbara who got there, so those things are possible for the really good mid-major school. That's something that we're not going to talk about it everyday in practice. It's not, 'Hey, today's an Omaha practice.' We're just going to try to do things right and make sure that the wins and losses in spring are usually a reflection of the small victories and the small things done right over the course of the entire year and just try to put ourselves in that position to where if magic happens and we have the right group of guys and we get hot at the right time of year we can put ourselves in the position to maybe make a run to go there.