O'Connor wanted the challenge of coaching baseball in SEC, and he'll get one at Mississippi State

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Brian O'Connor landed his first head coaching job at Virginia in 2004 and quickly turned a baseball program that had finished higher than fourth in the ACC just once during the previous 30 years into a perennial national contender.

Twenty-two years later, the idea of him in a dugout wearing anything other than his No. 26 Cavaliers jersey seemed unimaginable. He had passed on job opportunities at elite programs in the past decade and in 2024, following a third College World Series appearance in four years, signed a seven-year contract extension.

But last May, weeks after he tamped down reports he was in line for the job at Mississippi State, the Bulldogs came to him with an offer he couldn't refuse. In two weeks he'll begin his first season in the Southeastern Conference in the most high-profile coaching move of the year.

“A lot is made about the SEC for the right reasons — obviously the level of baseball, the coaches and the players year after year that this league produces,” O'Connor said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Part of this for me, selfishly, is I personally wanted the opportunity and the challenge every weekend to be at the absolute highest level.”

The money isn’t bad, either. O’Connor's four-year contract doubled his salary to an average of $2.9 million, making him the second highest-paid coach in college baseball behind LSU’s Jay Johnson ($3.05 million this year).

The Bulldogs are ranked as high as No. 4 in the preseason with 15 holdover players joined by a transfer class ranked No. 2 by D1Baseball.com. Tomas Valincius, projected to be the No. 1 starter, is among five transfers from Virginia. Catcher Kevin Milewski hit 16 homers for Seton Hall and shortstop Drew Wyers batted .407 with 11 homers at Bryant, where he was America East player of the year.

“I like our ballclub,” O'Connor said. “We’re two weeks out from opening day. We’ve got a really good group of transfers, but they haven’t worn this uniform yet. I like our talent, I like our depth, but they’ve got to go out and prove it and earn it and manage it. A lot of these guys don’t have the experience of managing a 30-game SEC schedule yet.”

O'Connor was 19-18 against SEC opponents at Virginia, and the Cavaliers won the second of back-to-back CWS finals against Vanderbilt for the 2015 national championship. Awaiting him this year are 10 straight weekend series in the conference that has produced six straight national champions, 11 since 2009 and had at least one team in 15 of the last 16 finals.

“I’m excited about the opportunity to be able to compete against the best every weekend,” he said, "because I think that draws the best out of you.”

O'Connor, 54, brought with him 917 career wins, seven appearances in the CWS, nine in the super regionals and 18 in the regionals, including 14 in a row from 2004-17.

“In a lot of ways it’s been a very, very easy adjustment,” he said, "and that’s because the people here are just amazing. They are so passionate about baseball. There’s an incredibly storied tradition here that Coach Polk instilled in Starkville and this baseball program.”

Ron Polk won 888 games and took six teams to the CWS in two coaching stints totaling 22 seasons. His 1985 Bulldogs, led by Will Clark and Rafael Palmeiro, are widely considered the best team to not win a national championship.

MSU's only national title came in 2021 under Chris Lemonis. The program went into a free fall the next two seasons, lost to O'Connor's Virginia team in a 2024 regional final and then struggled the first three months of last season. Lemonis was fired April 28, and the Bulldogs won nine of their last 11 under interim coach Justin Parker to nab an NCAA at-large bid.

The fans kept showing up in droves win or lose, with grill smoke rising from pregame tailgate parties, cowbells ringing from first to last pitch and Garth Brooks' “Friends in Low Places” blaring from the loudspeakers in the middle of the eighth inning. Average attendance of 11,000 at Dudy Noble Field was second behind national champion LSU last season, and the Bulldogs reliably rank in the top three every year.

Thousands showed up for a choreographed welcome event for O'Connor in June, and in November more than 10,000 were on hand for an alumni game. O'Connor said the vibe he gets is that everyone associated with MSU baseball is more than just hungry for sustained success.

“Starving is a different level from hungry,” O’Connor said. “You feel it in this community around this baseball program every day. I knew it because I had actually coached in the other dugout a couple of times, and it’s different. It’s like something you don’t see at other places.”

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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports