In-State Advantage: UConn Uses Geography, Coaching Continuity To Sit Atop Big East
Image credit: UConn coach Jim Penders (Photo courtesy of UConn)
Three years of free tickets and a family connection wasn’t enough to compel Matt Harvey to so much as consider going to Connecticut.
Harvey was the top prep prospect in the class of 2007. He played for Fitch High in Groton, Conn., less than 50 miles south of UConn’s campus in Storrs. He was coached by his father Ed, a member of the Huskies’ 1972 College World Series team.
Still, UConn coach Jim Penders couldn’t get a sit-down with Harvey, and when Harvey’s draft stock fell, he left the Nutmeg State for North Carolina, where he went on to become a first-rounder in 2010.
“Today, I think we’d have a good chance at Matt Harvey,” Penders said.
Rightfully so. Penders has led the Huskies to each of the last four NCAA Tournaments, most recently a decisive third game in the Stanford Super Regional that could have culminated in UConn’s first CWS trip since 1979. Instead, the Huskies settled for the program’s first 50-win season and back-to-back Big East Conference regular season and tournament championships.
A program that finished better than sixth in its conference only once in the first six years of Penders’ tenure is now a heavy favorite to make it five straight trips to a regional and not an outlandish pick for Omaha. It got there by treating its supposed disadvantages as advantages. Chief among them was geography.
“Geography, we’ve always been told that it’s a disadvantage for us. I’ve always disputed that and just will not accept it,” Penders said. “We live in the greatest part of the country. Fifth-seven million people live within a six-hour drive of us. There’s a reason people choose to live in this area. We’d be foolish not to take advantage of this opportunity.”
Penders’ pride in his home state and alma mater shine in that outlook, but he has assembled a staff that thinks the same way. Penders, associate head coach Jeff Hourigan, pitching coach/recruiting coordinator Josh MacDonald and volunteer assistant Chris Podeszwa have been the longest tenured four-man coaching staff for the last three years. The most recent changes were adding Hourigan and McDonald in 2012. Podeszwa has been with the program since Penders took over in 2004.
That grants them the benefit of continuity in their coaching approach and development plans. It also helps them find players in places few others can—Division II and Division III.
Cole Chudoba, the only Husky with a sub-3.00 ERA over more than 30 innings last year, did so as a transfer from Assumption, a D-II program in Worcester, Mass.
Catcher Matt Donlan, according to Penders “wanted to be a Husky in the worst way” out of Guilford (Conn.) High, but UConn had already landed Pat Winkel, who would go on to be a ninth-round pick for the Twins. Donlan chose to start his career at Stonehill in Easton, Mass., at the time a D-II school that will play its first D-I season this year. Once Winkel got drafted, Donlan jumped into the transfer portal. He shifted to UConn and started at catcher immediately, tying for the team lead with 12 home runs last year. Donlan signed with the Red Sox as a nondrafted free agent last July.
Penders credits a lot of their success with those players to MacDonald, the pitching coach and recruiting coordinator who gained a respect for that level of baseball and built relationships with its coaches as he was recruiting California junior colleges at the start of his career.
“We know where the players are in those Division IIs and Division IIIs, and we’re really hoping the schools in the Big 12 and SEC don’t know,” Penders said. “That’s been an advantage to us in the last couple of years. Oftentimes, these are kids we saw in high school and passed on for whatever reason.”
Ben Huber is another one of those success stories. He came from D-II Limestone (S.C.) and quickly became UConn’s everyday first baseman. He led the 2022 Huskies with 66 RBIs, ranked third with a .327 average and hit 11 home runs, one off the team lead.
“The resources help, for sure—that’s an advantage of it—but the coaching staff does a great job of putting you in situations that they understand your skill set works best for you,” he said. “They’re not putting you in situations you’re not used to. And the situations that you’re uncomfortable with, you’ve faced in the fall and in practice. We’ve practiced it so hard that once the season comes, it feels normal.”
Penders and MacDonald are careful to avoid being overly reliant on transfers of any kind. Korey Morton led the Huskies with a .411 average and .661 slugging percentage last year. He was a high school signee out of Norwalk, Conn.; Jack Sullivan came to UConn from Carmel, N.Y., and allowed two earned runs in 22.2 innings last season. Both are back for 2023. Matt Garbowski is another in-state high school signee who battled injuries in 2022, hitting .294 in just 51 at-bats.
With the help of recent success and in-state high school prospects succeeding in the program, Penders thinks things have changed.
“It was hard initially because, I’ve often said the people who are the last converts are the ones who live closest to the congregation because they think they know what’s going on in the church,” Penders said. “They’ve never been inside. Now, when we get these kids on campus from wherever they may be—New London or Stratford or Litchfield—they haven’t been here, or their parents think they know it.
“When they get here and they’re actually on the campus, they’re blown away because it’s come a long way in the last 20 years or so.”
To continue that rise in 2023, UConn has gone back to its old tricks: it added two players from Division III Wheaton (Mass.), righthander Stephen Quigley and outfielder Jake Studley, plus infielder Luke Broadhurst from Eastern Connecticut State, last year’s D-III champions.
Now, UConn’s reputation precedes it. MacDonald bumped into Frank Holbrook, the head coach of Division III Rhode Island College, who had a pitcher who dominated the league with a 2.29 ERA and .201 opponent average in 12 starts and 74 innings. Holbrook sensed the pitcher, Andrew Sears, might want to transfer and wanted to make sure MacDonald and the Huskies were aware of him.
Sears did transfer—to UConn.
“I like to think that we are a bit of a magnet for the hard-nosed player from the Northeast,” Penders said. “We’re one of the only programs in the Northeast that is competing nationally, so we don’t want to fall backward and compete regionally. There is no such thing as a rebuild anymore, we have to be in a position to reload.”
They now have a fanbase that expects it. During last year’s super regional, Penders was waking up to text messages from people watching the games from bars in West Hartford Center, New Haven and Fairfield County at 2 a.m. on the East Coast. Penders said a “very parochial” Connecticut comes together for the Huskies, which helped the program debut the newly constructed Elliot Ballpark in 2021.
The logical next step is Omaha, a destination the Huskies haven’t reached since 1979. Making that bit of history is not the only thing on their minds.
“I wouldn’t say just Omaha. Coach preaches every day that our goal isn’t to make Omaha. Our goal is to come back from Omaha with the wins and to win a national championship,” Huber said.
If the Huskies do it, they will likely do it relying on underclassmen from the Northeast or transfers getting their first taste of Division I, much like last year’s team that fell one win short of the CWS. Many of these Huskies, however, remember how close they came and what it must take to get there.
“The last game David Smith played was a game for Omaha. The last game Bryan Padilla played. T.C. Simmons, Korey Morton, Matt Garbowski, Ian Cook—the last game they played was knocking down the door to go for the grand prize,” MacDonald said. “There’s a lot of guys back who are hungry for that grand prize.”
Brett Hudson is a freelance writer in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
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