Kentucky Baseball Head Coach John Cohen Press Conference Quotes
On his impressions of the club so far into fall practice ?
?We like our club. We have been going at it about three months – a month of official practice – and we like this club. It is going to be a different club, I don?t think we are going to hit 99 home runs and finish third in the nation in home runs this season. I think we are going to run the bases a little more aggressively and I think defensively we have the chance to be a better club. I think the arms are dramatically better, in terms of velocity and second pitches ? change ups, breaking balls. I am real pleased with that part.?
On the 21st ranked recruiting class ?
?Recruiting has gone very well. Our recruiting class that is on campus now was ranked 21st in the country. I am a little biased but I thought it was better then that – 21st in Collegiate Baseball and 23rd in Baseball America. You don?t know about recruiting classes until you get them on campus but I think after having seen this group on campus I think they are better then that. We are excited about it I think we will be able to beat some people with velocity on the mound which is kind of a fun thing to see because in the past three years it has kind of been a second pitch, maneuver defensive situation for us.”
On where he would rank the recruiting class ?
?I think this group should have been ranked in the top-15, I really do. I will just mention some of the arms we are excited about ? Aaron Lovett, a junior-college transfer, a right-handed pitcher we feel like he has some dominant type of stuff. Chris Walden, the player of the year in the state of Ohio, a right hander, is going to be an outstanding player for us. Clint Tilford, the player of the year in Kentucky, is going to be an outstanding player. Tyler Henry, Colby Brown, and James Paxton are just some of the new arms we have which we are very pleased with and we feel like have a chance very early in their career to be very good players in the best league in America. Recruiting for the most part in terms of ranking has a lot to do with pitching and we feel like it was a pitching dominant class. Of the 20 guys we brought in, 11 of them were pitchers and we feel very good about that part of it.?
On how the 2006 SEC Championship season influenced recruiting ?
?No question it has had an impact. In fact, when we are recruiting, we will see a player that we like and coach Henderson and Bohannon would say, two years ago we would have taken that guy in a heartbeat but at this point in time we feel like that guy may not be good enough for what we already have. That is when you can tell you are getting better as a program. We are getting in a lot more homes. I am not amazed but it is a pleasant surprise to me how many people, especially in the northern part of the country and the upper Midwest, want to play for Kentucky and that makes our jobs a lot easier. Now getting into homes and being able to finalize the deal is difficult, especially when we are competing with the kinds of teams we are competing against. The commitments we already have for next year are phenomenal. Coach Henderson and Bohannon have done a marvelous job recruiting. They have taken all the positives that we already have and really parlayed that into another great recruiting class this fall.?
On how the offensive make up of the club will be different ?
?I think it can evolve into [a club that hits 100 home runs]. I think two years from now we can be another club that can hit 100 home runs and our ballpark plays that way. But to loose Ryan Strieby as a junior all of a sudden and your not 100-percent sure your going to loose him, then replacing him is difficult. But we have a couple of options which we feel are some really good options to play first base. John Shelby hit 18 home runs, so between those two guys you are missing 38 home runs among others we lost, guys like Michael Bertram. So we are going to have to create runs in some other ways and we are probably going to run more then we have in the past. Antone DeJesus is a guy that can really steal bases and a year ago, we didn?t use him as much because the four guys behind him in the order averaged like 15 home runs a piece. So you don?t want to run as much when you have to opportunity to hit the ball out of the ballpark. We will have a nice mix of some guys who will have some power just not as much and I think that some of the young guys we have can and will evolve into that in the future.?
On how scholarship breakdowns effect recruiting ?
?Coach Bohannon has a MBA from Wake Forest. That was one of the most impressive things to me about him, he has an MBA and he uses that a lot. He has us using several excel spreadsheets, continually figuring out different ways. It is not just the University of Kentucky?s problem, it is everywhere. We have 11.7 scholarships and we have 30 guys on some form of scholarship, so there is a lot of maneuvering to go around and we spend a lot of our time doing that. The difference between my job and football or basketball is those are head count sports. I can?t imagine what parents have to deal with in our sport but it is part of it and something that we have to deal with. We could spend hours talking about the breakdown of scholarships and how that effects our sport.?
On the MLB World Series and which Detroit pitcher he would throw ?
?I am kind of a Verlander guy because he went to college. Mr. Bonderman decided to skip college. I tend to cheer for guys who went to college when I am watching this World Series and there are a bunch of them. I was just going to tell our players this today but when you took at the Cardinals lineup or even Detroit and look at the amount of players who are less then six-feet tall it is astounding and the thing that is great about our sport is there are kids around the country who are less then six-feet tall who are wondering what sport they are going to play. But in our sport there is still a place for that 5-foot-10 guy to hone his skills, which make it so much fun, watching a guy like a David Eckstein and all the other guys in the World Series. How many Scott Rolen?s are there in the world, a 6-foot-5, 250 pound guy who can play third base and field anything that comes his way??
The Fall practice season concludes with an intra-squad game 1 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 29 at Cliff Hagan Stadium
