McDonnell Comfortable

Dan McDonnell, the University of Louisville baseball coach, is the kind of person you want as a next door neighbor – a straight talker, listens to what you have to say, takes good care of his property, will take on the world with you to protect the neighborhood.

McDonnell recently turned down a job offer from Auburn University, which would have made him one of the highest paid coaches in the Southeastern Conference. Did that to stay at U of L. Some quotes from a recent interview with the Louisville Sports Report are very refreshing and assuring to Card fans:

“We’ve put a lot of hard work into this program, and we’ve already had a lot of success. It would be hard to just turn our backs on that. We want to see this program be successful for many years to come.”

“…We took a good look at why we would want to go anywhere else to have success. The grass is not always greener. The reality is that we already have a great facility, we have a lot of young talent and we have a leader in Tom Jurich who is our No. 1 supporter and No. 1 fan.”

“It is always an anxious month leading up to the draft because every kid we sign has the ability to be drafted.  We are just hoping for all the right reasons that they want to come to college first.”

“We are two-and-a-half recruiting classes into building a program the way we’d like. We’ve had two full recruiting classes … and we’ve got several very talented young kids in our program. We are still going to be very young next year, but we’ll have a nice mix of guys with experience and new guys coming in.”

Under McDonnell, two straight trips to the NCAA tournament, including one to the College World Series and the Final Four. A strong foundation upon which to achieve greater things.