USF vs. IOWA at USF Baseball Stadium, Red McEwen Field
Friday - 6:30 p.m. • ESPN+ • Bulls Unlimited
Saturday - 2:00 p.m. • ESPN+ • Bulls Unlimited (Alternate)
Sunday - 11:00 a.m. • ESPN+ • Bulls Unlimited
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He's looking for power hitters, smart baserunners, slick defensive players, reliable starters and shutdown relievers. But those are the skills that every coach seeks for his dugout.
Mitch Hannahs, the first-year USF baseball coach, wants even more from his players. The most valuable attributes can't be quantified. Hannahs said he believes those intangibles add up to an uncompromising, winning style.
Players must know how to win, of course, but even more meaningfully, they should hate to lose.
Most of all, he wants his Bulls to play mad.
"Tom Brady (former NFL quarterback) played mad his entire career,'' Hannahs said. "For young players, until you learn to come to practice with the mentality of (going through) a five-game losing streak, you don't (have the mentality) you need to beat really good teams on your schedule.
"I think it's just simply feeling like you need to prove yourself every day. That's the reality of every player. Yesterday's gone. Today, I've got to prove myself again. And our team has to prove itself day-in, day-out. It's the mark of a good club that you come to the park every day with that mindset.''
Hannahs preached that approach during his 11 seasons at Indiana State, where his Sycamores were 355-214-1, including five NCAA Tournament bids and a spot in the 2023 NCAA Super Regional. The Bulls reached an NCAA Super Regional of their own in 2021, when they were American Athletic Conference Tournament champions and seemed on the verge of elevating the program.
Instead, the Bulls endured three consecutive losing seasons. Now Hannahs intends to build USF baseball from the ground up by identifying and developing his style of winning players.
"You look for a lot of things,'' Hannahs said. "Do the players want to be here? Do they have ambition? Do they want to do something while they're here as opposed to just finishing out their careers?
"The older guys who have been in this program — the seniors and maybe juniors — worked extremely hard for us this fall. The players have been great during this transition. We look for guys who are bringing their lunch pail. Everybody talks about it, but the reality of this level is when young guys learn to prepare like pros, you've got a really good club.''
USF's returning players already have responded to Hannahs' teachings.
"We just needed the discipline that Coach Hannahs brings,'' first baseman Rafael Betancourt said. "By bringing that standard every day, I feel like we're going to have a successful year. By bringing that competitiveness every single day, I'm trying to be the best player I can be and we're trying to be the best team we can be.''
"He's competitive, he's about his business … and I love it!'' outfielder Marcus Brodil said. "We did have talent (in previous seasons), but some people were just about themselves and didn't really have that team impact. This year, I feel like everybody is playing for the team and not just for themselves.''
What can the Bulls expect this season?
Hannahs said he will have a more accurate read on that once his team transitions from practices and scrimmages to actual competition.
"If all hell breaks loose, what do we look like?'' Hannahs said. "Who are the guys we need to make sure they stay on the front line as opposed to hiding in the back? We'll find out pretty quickly. Iowa has a really good ball club and they're going to give us some adversity to handle.
"We work too hard and the players put in too much time and too much effort not to want to win the last game that you play every season. We have not touched the postseason in a while, and we don't have guys daunting our roster with postseason accolades. Early on in the process, we have to have young men who learn to push themselves. That's our task (as coaches) right now … to push as hard as we can without breaking our club.''
Junior left-hander Corey Braun (a transfer from Ole Miss) and junior right-hander James Hill (Mitchell High School and the College of Central Florida) are expected to pace the starting pitching staff on the opening weekend. Hannahs said junior right-hander Bryce Archie, USF's football quarterback, could be the midweek starter. The bullpen has a variety of "mix-and-match'' candidates.
Hannahs wouldn't immediately declare a lineup, but said he's inclined to stick with a regular menu of everyday players.
"I think one of the worst things you can do in the first month is put guys in and out of the lineup,'' Hannahs said.
Expect Betancourt (.302 last season), Brodil (team-leading .319) and Jackson Mayo (124 career USF starts and 22 homers in the outfield) to assume prominent roles.
Three newcomers that have attracted attention are senior infielder Bradke Lohry, a Jesuit High School product who played in 27 games last season with the national-championship Tennessee Volunteers, senior first baseman Sebastian Greico, who set a Florida A&M program record with 17 home runs in 2023, and infielder Alex Brazer, a Lennard High School product who was last season's Sunshine State Conference Freshman of the Year at Eckerd College (.311, three homers, 27 RBIs).
Brazer has made an impression on Betancourt, who said his teammate has "one of the rawest forms of power that I've seen … he has light-tower power any day of the week. I feel like we've got a bunch of good hitters coming in, guys who are going to make an immediate impact.''
Hannahs said he prefers to make his judgments on what he observes moving forward instead of focusing solely on past production. In a way, it's a clean slate, a chance to make a fresh impression and the start of what could be a prosperous new era for USF baseball.
"Nothing that happened in the past matters anymore,'' Betancourt said. "I think we're good, but obviously nowhere near where we're going to be at the end of May. We're ready to go and ready to get this thing started.
"I like the way Coach (Hannahs) goes about his business. There's nothing fake, nothing sugar-coated. Everybody is coming to work every day, smiling, happy to be here. At the same time, you're not really messing around. We're focused on the goal of being the best team we can be.''
–#GoBulls–
