OU baseball program can now begin to heal

played at Davidson College in North Carolina, head coach at Boston College and Virginia Tech. To win at OU, a coach must recruit Oklahoma, Texas and, if necessary, California. Plus, he didn’t win big at either BC or Virginia Tech.

But Hughes answered all those concerns as well as a guy could. He said recruiting is about hard work and relationships. Said if someone demands Oklahoma/Texas recruiting connections, he still has recruiting connections in Austin, Dallas and Houston, where in his two years at Trinity he drove to those cities the weeks after signing day and recruited players for his non-scholarship university. And as far as lack of success at BC and VPI, a source (not Hughes) told me he had three baseball scholarships at Boston College (the limit is 11.7).

So Hughes absolutely deserves the benefit of the doubt. It was just good to see a no-nonsense guy take the job. I’m actually one of Golloway’s supporters — it will be hard for anyone to match his record of three Super Regionals in the last four years. That’s the baseball equivalent of the Sweet 16. Kelvin Sampson never went to three Sweet 16’s in a four-year span. Neither did Eddie Sutton. So Golloway did a fantastic job building up the program.

But it was always drama over something. Coaching feuds. Player unrest. Something. I’m not blaming Golloway for all of it, and while some of it was serious stuff, some of it was just silly. It was a spirit of nonsense. Hughes appeared to be no-nonsense. That’s just what OU needed. Not necessarily an OU guy. A Semore or Cochell guy. Not even a big winner. The first priority for Castiglione should have been a no-nonsense guy. That doesn’t mean a strict disciplinarian. Just no nonsense.

That’s what Hughes appears to be, and Cochell stepping back into the fold just a little made it even better.