‘You guys are always enough for me’
UConn’s Penders gives team empassioned message
Jim Penders flew out to Omaha, Neb. after all on Wednesday morning. Not exactly in the capacity he had hoped, however.
Following a six-hour flight back home from California on Tuesday, during which he conducted 30 exit meetings with his players, beginning on the charter flight and ending on the charter bus driving through Vernon, Penders was due to fly out to Omaha at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday for NCAA committee meetings.
Obviously, the 19th-year UConn baseball coach would have much preferred to be in Omaha this week with his team. That had been his stated goal throughout the Huskies’ run to a Big East title, a College Park Regional title and a win in the first game of a best-of-three Super Regional at Stanford.
Ultimately, UConn fell short, falling to a clearly more talented Stanford team in the next two Super Regional games on Sunday and Monday and extending the program’s drought of reaching the College World Series in Omaha to 43 years.
“What I told them throughout this postseason, I wanted them to have fun, stay liquid,” Penders recalled. “And I said, ‘You all know, this is not enough. Big East tournament is not enough, Regionals is not enough, Super Regionals is not enough.’ But I want you guys to know that you guys are always enough for me. Whatever you’re about, it’s always been enough for me. They need to know that. They left it all out on the field.”
Penders said there was disappointment “to a man” that the Huskies came so close.
“We felt the state behind us, we didn’t want to disappoint anybody. We felt like we had the team to do it. One days’ perspective here, Stanford was the better team, we should take no shame in losing to a fine opponent. What makes it so difficult is that we were just that one step away. We
needed to play our ‘A’ game on Sunday or Monday, and we didn’t do that. That’s what’s a gut-punch. But at the same time, there wasn’t anybody that didn’t try as hard as they could to win that game.”
And so, on the long flight back home on Tuesday, Penders bid adieu to several players who meant so much to this program record-setting, 50-win team. Austin Peterson and Pat Gallagher, the 1-2 punch atop the Huskies’ rotation, are potential mid-round MLB Draft picks next month.
“If somebody’s taking Austin,” Penders noted, “I don’t know why anybody wouldn’t take Gallagher, too.”
Guilford’s Matt Donlan, who boasts the best arm behind the plate that Penders says he’s ever coached, could be a mid- to lateround draft pick, as well. Casey Dana has a chance to get drafted, while Erik Stock and Zack Bushling have also graduated. Pitcher Enzo Stafanoni has another year of eligibility, but will most likely start a job with the Harvard Endowment Fund in Boston.
And, of course, despite missing the entire season following Tommy John surgery, standout pitcher/ first baseman Reggie Crawford could still be an earlyround draft pick. He was slated to head to the MLB Combine on Wednesday.
Still, there’s a lot of talent returning next season. More, on paper, than what Penders had coming back this season.
“You feel disappointed that we came up short of the destination we all had in mind,” the coach said. “But also feel fueled for next year, to do our best to get back. If we can do it with two returning position players, why can’t we do it with four or five returning position players? I know that’s the spirit that was on the charter flight home.”
UConn will also add some talented players to the mix, several of them through the transfer portal as well as some talented, Connecticut-born incoming freshmen, including Xavier’s Drew Kron, St. Paul’s Ryan Daniels and Coginchaug’s Kolby Pascarelli.
It didn’t make Tuesday’s exit meetings any less bittersweet for Penders. But it certainly gives him an extra kick in his step as he flies back out to Omaha — even if for a different reason than he would have liked.