To say Greg Lovelady is disappointed may be an understatement.
Not so much by the NCAA Tournament reveal on Monday - UCF's second-year head coach knew going in they'd likely fall on the wrong side of the bubble - but more on the frustration of not living up to potential. Lovelady said prior to the season he felt the 2018 squad may be one of the most talented teams he's coached, but results fell way short of expectations.
Lovelady, who is always candid and thoughtful in his interviews, didn't hold back in his 20-minute interview with the media on Tuesday morning.
"One, you feel bummed for Logan (Heiser), Hep (Eric Hepple), (Nick) McCoy and Max (Wood), that they don't get to finish their careers off with the way they wanted," Lovelady said. "Secondly, you feel bad for all the people, the Luke Hamblins and Eli Putnams of the world who did such a great job last year of putting ourselves on the map and laying the foundation. Just embarrassed that we let those guys down. Just let the fans down.
"It's just frustrating. You've got to do a lot of looking in the mirror though. It starts with me. I just didn't do a good enough job this year. We severely, severely, severely underachieved. At the end of the day, that's on me. Just didn't do a good enough job to reach the guys for them to understand how important games were and what we needed to do to match the expectations and the talent that we had. Just frustrating to leave a team talented like that on the field. Just didn't do enough to get into the NCAA Tournament.
"At the end of the day, that's on us. We didn't do enough. You can say whatever you want to say about what our metrics were, but at the end of the day we didn't do enough where the committee had no other choice than to put us in the tournament. Like I said, it was a frustrating year from day one. We just never turned the corner like I had hoped."
Lovelady didn't know whether a win in the conference tournament would have made a difference, especially because the committee said they were the fourth team out. They were still going to be short of 40 wins.
"That's a huge number," Lovelady said. "40 wins and top 40 RPI, the committee has never left you out.. We should have never been in that situation. We dropped too many games throughout the course of the year we felt we should have won. We just didn't show up or didn't play to our expectations. At the end of the day, that ended up costing us."
This wasn't the first time Lovelady brought up 2017 seniors Luke Hamblin and Eli Putnam as sorely-missed leaders, which seemed to hint on the lack of leadership from this year's team.
"It was huge. We just had very limited leadership. Vocally, just the way they go about their business. Again, we had a lot of new players and that plays into it a little bit. Last year our best players were just really, really good leaders. We just didn't have enough leadership. We had too much drama I felt like in the clubhouse and just external things like the draft that became the focal point too much instead of just the team. The year before we don't have the talent. Luke Hamblin had no desire to play professional baseball. He wanted UCF to be really, really good. He wanted to leave his legacy here. He cared about winning. So when the other things become the forefront of people's agendas or mindsets, you lose sight of what is supposed to be the No. 1 thing which is us winning games and the other stuff being a result. Our success leads to your success in the draft. That kind of stuff. I don't think that was the way things went this year."
Lovelady hoped they would "turn the corner" at some point during the season, but it never really happened. He brought up positives like Dallas Beaver and Ray Alejo, who made significant improvements throughout the course of the season to become the team's "best players" at the end of the year.
Was it the most challenging year for him as a head coach?
"Probably. You look back at it and it's obviously the most frustrating year because I thought this was the most talented team I've ever had. To not live up to our own personal expectations. Me personally, I'm going to take a lot of fault for this. I'm going to put a lot of this on my own and that's going to bother me because at the end of the day that's my job. To get the most out of this team and I didn't do that. I've got to learn from this and look in the mirror and figure out better ways to motivate and to get guys to believe. And change some things, whether it's recruiting wise or culturally in doing different things. Dynamic changes, whether it's the draft or the junior college stuff and not having guys here for three or four years all the time. I've got to come up with different ways to coach and get the same results that I want."
Lovelady alluded to a point I was about to bring up anyway - the fine line between recruiting JUCOs to win now vs. building for the future with high school depth. Given the high school baseball recruiting cycle, Lovelady explained going the JUCO route early was really out of necessity.
"The long term goal is never to be JUCO dominant," he said. "You try to utilize the JUCO spots as a spot-filler or a role-filler. Like, we're one guy away and we don't want a freshman. You bring them in and it's a lot easier. That's what we did at Wright State. We were signing one, two or three junior college kids a year. It was more like, 'We have a huge need at shortstop,' and where are we going to find the best one. We'd probably find it in junior college vs. a high school kid at this point.
"With recruiting the way it is when I got the job, really the 2019 recruiting class which means they won't be here until the 2020 baseball season, was the first class that we really recruited with a fair level playing field as everybody else. The guys that were freshmen here were either committed here or what was left over. Some of those guys are really good and that's not a bad thing. Just in terms of us trying to get the high school (recruits) and continue that, we felt like the 2019 class is our first class we feel like we have all the kids that we chose that we got a fair shake with everybody else in the country. We weren't picking what was left over kind of thing.
"It's kind of hard to get out of the JUCO mode and into the high school mode until you get those recruits in. That slows that process down. I think in four or five years, the goal would be to sign 90 percent high school kids and 10 percent JUCO kids. You have the draft that plays into it. Are the high school kids you do sign, are they going to show up? It definitely makes our sport, to me, the most difficult sport as a coach in terms of recruiting because we have our own players that can leave and we have our junior college and freshmen that might not even show up. It makes it a lot more difficult to plan and build and do those types of things. You just got to get the right mix and get the right guys.
"At the end of the day, it's not the junior college kids' fault that we didn't do well. There's just as much fault with the kids who have been here two or three years that didn't do enough in terms of leadership wise to allow us to have the success that we needed."
Lovelady reiterated about the growth of Dallas Beaver and Ray Alejo, both of whom just finished their first full season as everyday players.
"Both got off to slow starts, striking out a lot. Just looked overmatched. I'm sure part of it was wanting to get off to a good start, but it was learning. We talked about it. Not having 200 at-bats in a season is a detriment really. You've never done that so it's hard to understand the grind and how to manage and have good at-bats consistently. Not letting the failure to carry over. You look at the last month's stats, Ray and Dallas were head and shoulders our best players. To see their growth and how good of players they were over the last part of the season, to see their future because of that, I'm really proud of those two. Those two really care and really wanted to do well and really show that they belonged here and they could have success at this level. I'm really looking forward to being able to see that growth continue over the next year for both those guys. We're going to need it."
Pitching wise, Lovelady was proud of Thad Ward's development.
"He was immature, lazy, scatterbrained and a mentally-weak kid when we got here two years ago," Lovelady. "To see the growth... Justin (Parker) has done a great job not coddling him. I was surprised at times he didn't quit. He probably thought Justin hated him or we were too difficult on him, but we saw how good he could be. He was the guy last year where we'd get Hepple in there to get him out of a bases-loaded jam, and now that's his role... To go from a guy putting us in those situations to the guy that was trusted the most at the end of the year. He's going to make a lot of money now because of it. If you had asked me two years ago, after the first month I was here, whether Thad was going to be a second or third-round pick or be the first guy drafted off the team, we all would have laughed. It's all going to happen. That's a testament to him and Justin for how much work he's put in and gotten better at his weak points. He's a totally different person now."
With several pitchers slated to be drafted, plus the injury situation with Joe Sheridan, next year's pitching staff will look a lot different.
"It's always a worry," Lovelady said. "You bring in the JJs (JJ Montgomery) and those guys and you never really know what you're going to get. Academically are they going to make it? Physically, will they buy in? There's always challenges every year. You'd like to have more returners coming back that you can bank on. Who knows with not having the draft yet and not knowing who will technically be back and who's not.
"That's part of our job, we've got to develop guys. We're bringing in more guys and got to develop them. Just like Thad Ward, there's going to be somebody else that steps up. Just like a Cre (Finfrock) coming off an injury, like a David Litchfield that we thought highly of and that he'd be a big part of bullpen this year. He'll be back coming off surgery. I'd love to have more rock solid returners that have proven themselves, but Chris Williams and Garrett Westberg, and (Jeffrey) Hakanson had great numbers and he'll be a year older, (Jack) Sinclair, the guys we're bringing in and Litchfield, those guys are going to have to step up. I put a lot of trust in Justin to develop those guys and figure it out. Hopefully we'll be just as good."
When asked about which players need to step up and become leaders, Lovelady mentioned Ray Alejo and Dallas Beaver again.
"Ray and Dallas are going to be the two that really need to step up," Lovelady said. "Just to see their growth and the leadership qualities they have and the success they had will hopefully formulate some more leadership. We've already had initial conversations with those guys and I'll have more over the summer with them. Ask them to do more, leadership wise and help me more. Just be the guys that show the way and kind of get things back to where guys like Luke and Eli had gotten it to. Those two guys offensively I think are going to be the biggest ones.
"And a guy like Westberg will have to take over for Hepple and (Bryce) Tucker for things they did in the weight room. He was hooked on to them a lot this year. He really changed his body and I think the leadership of Hepple and Tucker with the legacy they left is going to be big. Now he's going to have to step up with work ethic. Chris Williams is going to have to do more. They'll be guys that step up that you kind of don't foresee necessarily, maybe some junior college guys that come in and hopefully get their feet on the ground and help put us in a good situation."
Does he expect Rylan Thomas and Tyler Osik to come back, given both are draft eligible?
"It's tough to tell," Lovelady said. "I think Osik will be back. I think he wants to be back. Rylan, obviously being draft eligible, he's all over the map when you talk to guys. I wouldn't be shocked if he goes in the third round or wouldn't be shocked if he doesn't get drafted at all. Slipping, or people figuring he's going back to school. Not that he's not good enough to be drafted. He could be all over the map. I don't think Rylan is dead set on either or. I think if he gets what he wants, he'll go. If he doesn't, he has no problem coming back and proving again what kind of hitter he is. That's one of those things I'll be looking at the computer screen 12 hours come Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. It'll be a stressful day with the kids we've got coming in and making sure all those guys are going to show up. It will be a stressful three days.
"The guys I know are going to leave, JJ and Tucker, unless something crazy happens, they're going to get drafted pretty high and will get what they want. There's also some in-betweeners and some guys in the recruiting class that are in-betweeners that you just never know. Could be here or not be here. You could go from a good draft day to a really bad draft day."
