UCF has a new baseball coach.
Less than a week after Terry Rooney departed to take an assistant's job at Alabama, athletic director Danny White announced Monday night - via a live social media stream - Wright State head coach Greg Lovelady would be the new leader of the program.
White's message to the fanbase was simulcast on both the Periscope and Facebook Live platforms.
"Knight Nation, we've got a special social media opportunity this evening right here at Jay Bergman Field," White said while standing on the outfield deck at UCF's baseball stadium. "I'm excited to finish with a really successful search for your new head baseball coach. A proven winner, a guy who won two national championships as a catcher at Miami and is off to an unbelievably successful start as a head coach after helping rebuild the Wright State program, coming off back-to-back 40-win seasons and some impressive runs in the NCAA Tournament. I couldn't be more proud to announce to you your new head baseball coach, Greg Lovelady."
Lovelady's roots are in Florida. He's a Miami native and later played for the hometown Hurricanes. He was a starting catcher for their 1999 and 2001 national championship teams, the latter of which was a team captain. He later returned to Omaha as an assistant coach with Miami in 2003 and 2004.
Hired by Rob Cooper to join the Wright State staff in 2005, Lovelady was elevated to an associate head coach role a couple years later in 2007. When Cooper was hired at Penn State following the 2013 season, Wright State promoted Lovelady who took the program to even greater heights, posting a 124-56 record in three seasons while dominating the Horizon League. Wright State won a school-record 43 and 46 games the past two seasons and came just short both years of advancing to an NCAA Super Regional as the runner-up of the 2015 Champaign and 2016 Louisville regionals.
Lovelady was the 2016 ABCA/Diamond Mideast Region and Horizon League Coach of the Year. He also won league Coach of the Year honors in 2014.
"I want to thank Danny White and Brad Stricklin for their efforts on the search," Lovelady said in a UCF press release. "They did a great job of getting everything done so quickly. I'm excited to get down there and meet our team in person. This is a great opportunity for me and my family. I'm looking forward to working with this group of guys to bring championships to UCF and Orlando."
White indicated Lovelady's "personality" immediately stood out during the interview, which took place Sunday.
"When you guys all get a chance to meet him, he's going to make you laugh," White said. "He has a great time interacting with the players. Everything I learned about him in the research part of the phase told me that. When you get a chance to visit with him, you can see how talented he is connecting with recruits and certainly with our players. I saw that in the video teleconference we just did with the team. You can tell they're excited to play for him. I know his connection with his players at Wright State was special and was a big part of their success."
Lovelady takes over a team that dealt with a multitude of injuries this past year, which in turn led to a 26-33 record. He does have some pieces to work with, particularly on the pitching staff if everyone remains healthy.
"The players said to me they have as much talent as anybody in our conference," White said. "This is not a rebuilding effort. We want to compete for a championship right away. Coach Rooney did a great job building this program. We want to build off of that. Certainly not look at it as a rebuilding proposition. We had some injuries this past year. We expect to compete at a really high level. They're looking for somebody to maximize their talents. Someone they can work with right away, someone who has walked in their shoes. Certainly Greg being a high-level player himself, I think can give them some great perspective that way."
Lovelady, 37, and wife Lindsay have two sons, Noah (7) and Gavin (4).
"He's a great family guy," White said. "Tremendous character. Everything we learned about him from people in the sport of baseball really affirmed he's a high-character person. He was a tremendous student at Miami, a finance major. Really kind of represents everything we believe in from a student-athlete and someone certainly who will be a representative of our program. A big part of his responsibility is to groom our student-athletes. It's who is as a person, his background, the brand he's built for himself in baseball and the product on the field. What he's accomplished at Wright State is impressive in a short period of time."
