By Roscoe Nance
The Coppin State baseball program is breathing rarified air these days.
After finishing in the bottom two of its division every season since the MEAC went to its two-division alignment in 2011, the Eagles are flying high. They won the Northern Division and have the best record in the conference with an 18-4 mark.
Those 18 victories are a school single-season record.
The Eagles’ success has likely caught observers off-guard, but not eighth-year head coach Sherman Reed. He says he saw the kind of season his team is having coming after a few fall practices.
The Eagles weren’t good defensively in 2017; they were last in the MEAC with a .930 fielding percentage while committing 103 errors. The result was predictable. They were last in the Northern Division (8-15) and they had the fewest overall victories in the conference with an 11-31 record.
“We knew we had to improve our defense,’’ Reed said. “Last year, we didn’t make key plays in key situations, and we got killed on defense.’’
With that in mind, Reed focused on strengthening the Eagles’ middle defense. This season’s recruiting class included shortstop Derek Lohr of Bothell, Wash., and centerfielder Marcos Castillo of Round Rock, Texas, who both cracked the starting lineup. The two freshmen have solidified the Eagles up the middle defensively.
Castillo has only committed five errors; Lohr has a .888 fielding percentage while handling 152 chances. His presence allowed junior Erik Crossman, who had a strong freshman season but struggled last season, to move from shortstop to second base where he has been rejuvenated at the plate.
“After a couple weeks this fall, we had to say, ‘hey man, on paper, we’re pretty darn good,’’ Reed said. “When you’re recruiting, you never really know until you get them on the field and see how they acclimate themselves to the team and quality of kids they are. After the first couple of weeks of practice, we knew we had something special if we could keep the kids together, have them buy into the game and get the kids to go to class.’’
The Eagles have a good balance of hitting, defense and pitching. They are No. 1 in the conference in batting (.286), No. 5 in ERA (5.48) and No. 4 in fielding percentage (.953).
However, Reed says their strength lies on offense.
“We are disciplined and have strong plate presence,’’ he said. “Guys know the strike zone; we swing the bat from one to nine. We’re going to put up some runs.’’
Coppin State averages 5.3 runs a game and four batters – Nazier McIlwain, (.345), Lohr (.361) and Allen Santana (.323) – are in the top 10 in the conference in hitting.
Reed, an assistant at Coppin State for two years before becoming head coach, meticulously laid the foundation for the Eagles’ current success. When he took the helm in 2011, he decided to build the program by recruiting high school seniors, even though he knew that strategy wouldn’t lead to winning immediately, and it didn’t.
The Eagles were winless in the MEAC (0-24) and 1-53 in 2012 with a starting lineup made up of eight freshman position players. With 20 freshmen and sophomores on its roster, Coppin State was the youngest team in NCAA history.
Despite all of the losses, the Eagles weren’t to be mistaken with the 1962 New York Mets – those lovable, laughable losers who lost a Major League-record 120 games and led manager Casey Stengel to ask plaintively, “Can’t anybody here play this game?’’
Six of the Eagles’ losses that season were by two runs or less.
“That was the beginning of setting the framework,’’ Reed said. “We had some top-notch athletes. They knew if they came to Coppin they were going to play right away, as opposed to going to some more established programs where they would have to sit. We wanted to strictly stick with young high school players. I look back at the scores from 2012, and it was amazing. Those kids were competitive.’’
The Eagles were 18-33 in 2013, the biggest improvement in the NCAA that season, and reached the semifinals of the MEAC Tournament. They have qualified for the MEAC Tournament five of the past seven previous seasons.
Coppin State has risen to the top of the MEAC on the strength of improved facilities, thanks to what Reed refers to as re-branding of the baseball program and creative recruiting.
The first step in the re-branding, process, Reed says, was construction of a 200,000-square foot physical education facility that includes a state-of-the-art training center with a turf field where the team can practice. In addition, the team upgraded its travel arrangements, busing on road trips instead of using vans; the quality of meals on the road has improved also. The team eats at sit-down restaurants rather than having fast food meals
The Eagles’ roster consists of athletes from 12 states, the District of Columbia and three countries outside the United States. Only two team members are from Maryland.
“When you talk Coppin State University baseball,’’ said Reed, “we had such struggles in the past that those recruits and those baseball players in the state of Maryland knew of them and the history of Coppin through their dads, their uncles, their siblings. We were never thought of as being an option for the local guys. Even though we were re-branding the whole Coppin State baseball brand and the experience you could have at the Division I level, it was slow to grow with recruits in the immediate area. We made a decision: No problem. We’ll go outside to get our kids. Once you got outside 50-60 miles of Baltimore, kids were more likely to listen to your story because they didn’t know about the past. That’s how that started with us getting kids from all over the globe.
“To reach our goal of winning a championship – and our immediate goal is winning a division championship – guys have to trust in our game plan,’’ Reed added. “With the advance scouting that the coaching staff does we put together a really good game plan for all of our opponents. All we ask the guys to do is trust the game plan and execute.
“If they trust the game plan we put in place and execute, the end result is going to be something we’ll all be pleased with. If they continue to there is no reason why after the first championship, and we feel we’re right there and after the next two or three games we should have that locked down, the next biggest prize is going to be the conference championship. We believe strongly the guys aren’t going to deviate from what has gotten them to this point. That puts in a position where the guys are very confident that they’re the best team in the conference right now.’’