Helman needs help in getting Ags into NCAA Tournament
COLLEGE STATION — Second baseman Michael Helman easily led Texas A&M in hitting this season, a feather in the baseball cap of a pure swinger who didn’t receive any major scholarship offers out of high school.
Despite hitting .471 as a senior in high school, Helman figures major programs ignored him not because he was a late bloomer but an early squatter.
“I was a catcher all through high school and about 5-foot-7 and 145 pounds,” Helman said. “Not the type of size you usually recruit as a catcher.”
Helman leads the Aggies into the SEC tournament in Hoover, Ala., on Tuesday, with A&M (36-19) needing a decent showing to ensure a bid into the NCAA Tournament.
“When you’ve gone through a 10-week schedule in the SEC, you’ve had a lot of good days, and you’ve had a lot of bad days,” said A&M coach Rob Childress, whose program lost seven of nine league games to close out the regular season. “You’ve got to be able to put that to bed and focus on the challenge ahead.”
The Aggies have made the previous 11 NCAA Tournaments under Childress, a school record, but are considered firmly on the tournament bubble based on their sluggish finish to SEC play. No. 11 seed A&M takes on sixth-seeded Vanderbilt at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday in an elimination game, with the winner facing third-seeded Georgia on Wednesday in cranking up the double-elimination action.
“We just need to play good for nine innings, and the scoreboard will take care of itself,” Childress said. “We won 36 games in the regular season, so we’ve done that more often than not. That’s what we need to get back to doing.”
Helman (6-1, 190 pounds) has done it all along, pacing the Aggies in hitting (.365) and doubles (14) while tying for the team lead in stolen bases (12).
“There’s always room to improve,” Helman said when asked if he had proved himself in one of the nation’s top baseball conferences.
As a diminutive catcher with a big bat out of Lincoln Pius X High in Lincoln, Neb., Helman signed with Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College three years ago, then grew up and out over the next two years. A year ago at Hutchinson, Helman hit .487 and jumped at A&M’s offer to play in the SEC — without even having stepped foot in College Station.
“I just knew I had a passion to play there,” said Helman, last year’s junior college national player of the year.
A&M’s program has deep Nebraska ties, with Childress having served as Nebraska’s pitching coach prior to his hire at A&M in 2005 and assistants Will Bolt and Justin Seely having played for the Cornhuskers in the 2000s.
A&M outfielder Logan Foster and relief pitcher Nolan Hoffman also hail from Lincoln, and Hoffman was Helman’s teammate at Hutchinson. Helman first visited the A&M campus in November 2016 and watched the A&M football team defeat UTSA at Kyle Field.
“I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face the whole time I was in College Station,” Helman said of his first impression of A&M.
Now he’ll need to continue his regular-season pace and hope some of his teammates join him. The Aggies scored a lone run in three of their final nine SEC games and were shut out in another.
“It’s a fresh start for everyone,” A&M first baseman Chris Andritsos said.
The Aggies won an SEC Tournament title in 2016 and last year lost to Missouri in a single-elimination game to get things started. A&M squeezed into the NCAA Tournament a year ago, then swept its way through a regional at the University of Houston and a super regional against Davidson at Blue Bell Park.
The Aggies made their second College World Series in 12 seasons under Childress — the equivalent of the Elite Eight in the NCAA basketball tournament — but dropped their first two games in Omaha, Neb., to Louisville and TCU.