New baseball coach: Tulane’s David Pierce

David Pierce Bio at Tulane Athletics site.



David Pierce enters his second season as head coach of the Tulane Green Wave baseball program after leading the program back to the NCAA Regional landscape for the first time since 2008 in just his first year on the job.

Pierce, who guided the Sam Houston State Bearkats to three consecutive trips to the NCAA Regionals from 2012-14, was named the 23rd head coach of the Tulane Green Wave baseball program on June 8, 2014. He owns an overall record of 156-88.

In his first year on the Uptown campus, Pierce rejuvenated a program that was longing for an NCAA appearance. Guiding the program into its first year in the highly-competitive American Athletic Conference, Pierce led the Green Wave to an overall record of 35-25, along with a 14-11 record for a third place finish in the league. The American Athletic Conference was rated as the third-best conference, RPI-wise, in the nation.

Tulane secured a spot in the NCAA Baton Rouge Regional, thanks in large part to a tough schedule that saw wins over nationally-ranked teams like UCF, Houston and UNC-Wilmington. The appearance marked Pierce's 15th-consecutive trip to an NCAA Regional, an unprecedented achievement.

Under Pierce's guidance, the Green Wave of 2015 set a new school record in shutouts with nine while also ranking fourth in the NCAA. Additionally, the defense turned 61 double plays, good for ninth in the nation on the season. Two players in Corey Merrill and Stephen Alemais were named to the American Athletic Conference Second Team at season's end, marking the first postseason conference honors for a Green Wave player since 2012.

Pierce put together a record of 121-63 in three seasons as head coach of the Sam Houston State Bearkats. In his three seasons at SHSU, Pierce took the Bearkats to three consecutive NCAA Regional appearances for just the second time in program history. Pierce was named the head coach at SHSU prior to the 2012 season after serving as an assistant coach for nine years at Rice University.

In his third season in Huntsville, Texas, Pierce guided the Bearkats to a 43-19 overall record that included a berth into the NCAA Fort Worth Regional. The 43 wins were the second-most in a single-season in Bearkats history since joining the Division I ranks in 1987. The Bearkats opened Regional play with a 2-1 victory over Dallas Baptist before falling to TCU in the second-longest NCAA postseason game in NCAA history: a 22-inning, 3-2 loss. The Bearkats bounced back with a 9-2 win over Siena to play for a regional championship on June 1, falling to TCU by a score of 6-1. In Pierce's second season at SHSU, the 2013 squad won 14-of-15 games down the stretch to clinch the Southland Conference title and solidify their status as an at-large candidate into the NCAA Regionals. Pierce's program won the Southland Conference regular season championship for the second consecutive year - the first time in program history - while finishing the regular season with 36 wins to earn the first national-ranking of the season for the Bearkats. Sam Houston State picked up a victory at the Southland Conference Tournament and then competed in an NCAA Regional in Baton Rouge.

In Baton Rouge, the Bearkats beat Louisiana-Lafayette, 4-2, for the program's first opening round win since beating No. 1 Miami in Austin in 1996. The Kats then took on LSU in front of the then-largest crowd (10,752) in the history of Alex Box Stadium. SHSU took a 5-4 lead into the eighth inning before falling 8-5 to the No. 1 seeded Tigers. The season ended with a 7-5 loss to ULL despite having the go ahead runs on base to end the game. The 2013 Bearkats finished with a 38-22 record.

Pierce kicked off his head coaching career in grand fashion during the 2012 season, leading the Kats to the regular season conference title and an overall record of 40-22. During the course of the season, the Bearkats made program history by being ranked in each of the major college baseball polls for the first time since joining the Division I ranks in 1987. The 2012 team made their seventh NCAA Regional appearance, earning an at-large berth in the Houston regional. SHSU defeated No. 1 seed Rice and reached the finals against eventual College World Series participant Arkansas.

Pierce was honored as a "Regional Coach of the Year" in 2012 by the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA), as well as, being named Southland Conference "Coach of the Year" in 2012 and 2013. He became the first Southland coach to earn consecutive honors since UTSA's Sherman Corbett (2007-08).

He also was twice named by PerfectGame.org as one of 10 rising stars in the NCAA Division I college baseball coaching ranks.

Pierce tutored two of the highest-drafted Bearkats in the history of the program. Cody Dickson, taken at No. 119 overall in the fourth round of the 2013 MLB First-Year Player Draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates, is the highest drafted Bearkat baseball player since moving to the Division I level. Caleb Smith was selected in the 14th round of the same draft by the New York Yankees to become just the 19th Sam Houston player selected in the top 15 rounds of the Major League Baseball draft. At the conference level, many of Pierce's pupils earned honors throughout his three seasons at the helm of the Bearkats program. Anthony Azar was named the Southland Conference Player of the Year in 2014, while four others earned All-Conference honors for the season. In 2013, Kevin Miller and Azar earned First Team All-Southland Conference honors for the second-consecutive year while three others saw their names on the Second Team. Three Bearkats were spread out amongst the Second and Third teams in 2012.

Prior to joining SHSU, Pierce was an assistant coach for nine years for a Rice Owl team that has been one of the best in college baseball. He served as hitting coach from 2003-05 before moving to the role of pitching coach from 2006-11. Pierce was instrumental in the success of Rice's first ever National Championship team as the squad hit .313 with 51 home runs and 449 RBI in 2003 under Pierce's tutelage. As pitching coach from 2006-2011, Pierce produced a pitching staff ranked in the top 30 in the NCAA in staff ERA for five years, including a No. 4 national mark in 2007. Eight Pierce-coached pitchers were selected in the MLB First-Year Player Draft, including left-handed starter Joe Savery as the 19th overall pick in the first round. Two of Pierce's pupils earned major Conference USA awards during his time with the Owls, as Ryne Tacker was named the 2007 Conference USA Pitcher of the Year and Owl freshman pitcher Ryan Berry was named the league's freshman of the year during the same season.

Before joining the Rice program for his second stint - he was an assistant with the Owls for a season in 1991- Pierce worked across town with the Houston Cougars program for the 2001 and 2002 campaigns. In both years with the Pierce working as the hitting coach, the Cougars made NCAA postseason appearances, including an NCAA Super Regional appearance in 2002, and helped the team to just a game away from a College World Series berth.

Under Pierce's direction in 2002, UH sluggers pounded out nearly 700 hits and finished the season with a .310 batting average, the fifth-best single-season performance in team history.

He tutored a trio of Cougar hitters, who established themselves as one of the finest groups of sluggers in school history. Brett Cooley (18) and Chris Snyder (15) tied a school record with 33 home runs by a Cougar duo. Jesse Crain added 11 home runs, giving the three the greatest home run totals by a Cougar trio in school history.

Pierce received his first top job as a head coach for five seasons at Pasadena's Dobie High School, where he led the Longhorns to three District 23-5A championships and three berths in the Region III semifinals.

Among his honors at Dobie was winning the district "Coach of the Year" award three times, being tabbed a coach for the Houston area all-star series, and being named a coach in the United States Junior Olympic trials.

In his five years at Dobie, many of Pierce's players earned individual honors. Pierce tutored three all-state players, 36 all-district stars, and 10 players who went on to perform at the college level. Shane Nance, one of Pierce's top proteges at Dobie, became a college All-America at Houston before pitching in the majors for the Milwaukee Brewers and Arizona Diamondbacks.

Pierce also made coaching stops at Episcopal and St. Pius X, both high schools in Houston. While in Houston, Pierce worked as a batting practice pitcher for the Houston Astros from 1994 through 2000.

Pierce's playing career began at St. Pius X High School in Houston. He then went on to Wharton County Junior College (1982-83) and the University of Houston (1984-85). He helped pace the Cougars to an appearance in the NCAA Tournament as a senior in 1985. He completed his degree at Houston in 1988.

Pierce is married to the former Susan Kubiak - the sister of current Denver Broncos head coach Gary Kubiak. The Pierce's have two children, Chelsea and Shea. Their son, Shea is a senior on the Tulane baseball team. Their daughter, Chelsea, is a professional dancer in the Los Angeles-based company, Diavolo.

The David Pierce File

Education: University of Houston, 1988
Wife: The former Susan Kubiak
Son: Shea
Daughter: Chelsea

Playing Experience

1984-85 - University of Houston
1982-83 - Wharton County Junior College
1978-81 - St. Pius X High School (Houston)

Coaching Experience

2012-14 - Sam Houston State, Head Coach
2003-11 - Rice University, Assistant Coach
2002-03 - University of Houston, Assistant Coach
1996-2001 - J. Frank Dobie High School, Head Coach
1992-95 - Episcopal High School, Assistant Coach (Houston)
1991 - Rice University, Assistant Coach
1989-90 - St. Pius X High School (Houston)

Additional Experience

2000 - USA Junior Olympic Trials coach
1994-2001 - Houston Astros Volunteer Batting Practice Pitcher

 

Is this good news?

 

His main qualification, to me, is he knows Houston HS baseball well. I have said many times that if you can just recruit the Houston area well, you can be a successful college baseball coach. HS baseball is H-U-G-E in Houston.

 

Maybe he can wake up the bats here.

 

He's never been to a super regional. This like football all over again with rolling the dice on an unproven guy who has coached in lower conferences.... I guess all I can say is I hope this dice roll works out better than the last one.

 

+1

 

No reason he wasn't hired after the regionals so the negative knock in recruiting will be he wasn't the first choice. We will know more in 10 -11 months.

 

I don't see coaching in a lower conference as being as big a deal in this case. It's not like he never faced top competition and has no idea of how to compete with it. Baseball is baseball. If he can teach this team to catch fly balls and not boot grounders, then he immediately makes an impact.

 

^^^This and hit.

Wonder if he will bring in the D-F fences?

 

However, he knows Texas and recruiting in Texas, which will go a long way and be an improvement over Augie in a big way....

He has taken two dormant teams into the NCAA tournament which was quite a feat unto itself and he worked a couple times for Graham at Rice

 

Getting into the field of 64 is not good enough. I want to win the tourney - not just participate in it.

 

Yes of course to win it all but FIRST you have to get into the 64.

 

I used to have that thought every time Gus took us to Omaha.

 

It's a HELL-OF-A-LOT better news that taking Tadlock, Holliday, Savage, Casey, Mainieri, O'Connor, or Corbin....that's for sure!!!

 

Interesting fact: from 1996-2001 Pierce coached the Dobie High School team in the Pasadena school district.

The Dobie mascot? Longhorns.

 

Dobie HS football

 

Yes!

 

This looks like a really great hire. I think he will win big at Texas.

 

Name the two coaches that are now competing for the championship right now. Also he's going to have talent available to him that he's never had at his other coaching stops. If he's a good baseball coach everything else will take care of itself.

 

Oh well in that case, screw all the more qualified coaches. We got ourselves a Longhorn!

 

We landed a solid fundamentals (hitting and pitching) coach who learned under one of the most respected coaches (Wayne Graham) Texas faced in the last few decades.

Rice was our most feared OOC opponent back in Pierce's days there. I respected the hell out of that team and highly valued our wins over them. We took plenty of losses too.

It's pretty short-sighted to criticize a coach for taking two small, previously lame programs and bringing them to 5 straight regionals.

Not to mention his winning with regularity in the regionals only to fall short to a higher seed, power 5 school like TCU. Even those losses were close.

Wait and see what this coach with deep Texas recruiting ties and elite program fundamentals coaching can do with our huge upgrade in resources.

This will turn out well for us. No doubt Augie knows a thing or two about David Pierce and green-lighted the move.

Give the man a chance to work his magic, it's gonna be fun.

 

Now that the hand has played out, I think David Pierce was probably the best somewhat proven head coach available. I hope he will be able to get good assistant coaches-his pitching coach just left for Alabama. I wish Skip had stayed, but understand his disappointment and a need for a fresh start.

I do think that we were in so many ways in the wrong place at the wrong time and that other had a more effective longer vision or just got lucky. It seems we put all of our eggs in Skip Johnson’s basket when we gave Augie the 3-year extension in 2014 after our improbable trip to Omaha that year. That told the world approximately when the Texas job would come open. Good athletic directors did what good athletic directors do: manage for the foreseeable future. They locked up the best somewhat young college baseball head coaches and star associate coaches. There were rumors we were close on bigger name head coaches and maybe we though we had one close to locked-up and he wiggled off the hook.

When things didn’t go well after that, Skip’s chance to be our head coach disappeared and we were left attempting to raid other major programs assuming that our checkbook, tradition and facilities would be enough. That proved to be a major miscalculation and a total embarrassment to us after one after another used us to get a major raise and contract extension, probably without any serious interest.

The guy who played the game best: Dan McDonnell @ Louisville who ended-up with a 10-year contact doubling his salary to $1M. He hasn’t won a national championship or anything else to merit that much money. He just has the favor of a very wealthy donor.

The guy who may have played the game worst: Tim Tadlock who signed a contract on 05/19/16 for 6 years for $375,000 a year with a covenant not to compete which barred him from going to any Big 12 school. Maybe he was just loyal to his alma matter and at a good place in his life and money wasn’t a major driving force. Even so, if he had held off 45 days, we could have probably gotten a much better deal if he wanted to stay or chosen to leave to become head coach of the Texas Longhorns with his BFF Skip Johnson as his pitching coach.

The one I’m shaking my head about: Kevin O'Sullivan of Florida. He only makes about $567,000 per year and has crap facilities. I saw them in the Regionals and Super Regionals and they were far worse than Disch-Falk before the remodel and pitifully short of where we are after the remodel. They keep promising him facility upgrades, but never deliver and now his athletic director is leaving.

It absolutely didn’t help our case that we had a lame-duck and inexperienced athletic director negotiating for us. Announcing Augie’s job change before the CWS ended was strictly amateur hour and put all the coaches with teams still playing in a touch stop unnecessarily.

 

These are the type of first day statements I like to hear...

"As a kid growing up in Texas, I dreamed of being a Longhorn and wearing the burnt orange," Pierce said. "Today that dream is coming true. I am truly honored and grateful to become a part of The University of Texas community and to serve as head baseball coach."

"Texas is second to no one. Just growing up, I was on the field when David Denny broke the doubles record at Texas. I played against a lot of the guys in the mid-'80s and just understood the tradition and the history and the expectation of being a Longhorn. I understand it's a position that's going to hold a lot of responsibility, and I'm ready to accept that."

I think Texas Baseball fans are going to be excited to see the energy and passion of our team, the will to go out and play as hard as we can and try to do things that represent both the university and the athletic department well," Pierce said. "We'll look to run a high-paced offense that has the ability to score in multiple ways to go along with the pitching and defense that gives us a chance to win championships."

It's awesome he faced Gus teams as a player and coached against Augie teams during prime years. Shows he knows firsthand exactly what Texas baseball tradition is all about.

And also understands we expect to be in the CWS regularly. He already said he knows what's expected and is ready to accept it.

Nothing worse than hearing a new coach tell fans it's gonna take time and be patient, blah blah blah...Strong did that and killed a lot of early enthusiasm.

Doesn't matter if you know it's gonna take time, give fans hope and work your tail off to deliver. Valiantly falling short due to roster deficiencies is understood early on.

Pierce also said he was ready to go as is at Tulane and delivered the playoffs right away.

 

It will be interesting to compare the roster on the first day of the 2016 Fall Semester and the roster for the first game in 2017. The change might be a clue to what happened in 2016.

 

Also very intrigued what roles he settles the returning pitchers in. Something tells me there will be a lot of shakeup there.

It's great knowing the agony of playing favorites and prolonging dead bats in the lineup are likely history. Can't play that nonsense with your job and reputation in the balance.

 

Thank Gawd we didn't go after Tadlock, seriously. He's gonna end up a bust.
I'm told that Augie has had Pierce on a very short list of possible replacements, so I'lll trust his judgment on this matter.

 

I don't care how he does it, bunts us or monster balls us to Omaha

 

I said "monster balls"

 

I took a closer look at 2016 Tulane to get a feel for the true nature of their 41-21 record.

Was curious if the record was padded with wins over easier teams, with lesser results against better teams. Glad to say that wasn't the case.

The first thing jumped out was their reg season series record. Tulane played 14 series (at least 2 games b2b against the same team).

Of 14 multi-game series, they won 11, lost 1, and tied 2.
In 8 conference series they won 5, lost 1, and tied 2.

5-3 in notable reg season OOC games:
Arizona W 11-10
Nebraska L 5-11
Texas W 3-2
Texas L 3-10
Texas W 5-3
#9 LSU W 7-1
#20 La-Laf L 2-9
#9 LSU W 4-1

3-2 in notable reg season conference games:
UH L 6-10
UH W 10-4
UH L 2-3 (13 inn.)
UH W 8-4
UH W 4-3

22-10 OOC record during reg season
15-7 conference record , AAC reg season conf champs

AAC tournament:
UCF W 4-3
UH L 3-5
UCF W 4-1
UH L 2-6

Two wins against 26-33 UCF. Despite splitting the first 2-game series and winning the final 3-game series, Tulane went 0-2 against UH in the conf tourney.

NCAA Regional:
Boston College L 2-7
#11 Ole Miss W 6-5
Utah W 4-1
Boston College L 3-6

In the regional they knocked off 26-29 Utah and #11 ranked Ole Miss. In the end two losses to regional winner Boston College was their undoing.

Overall, Tulane had consistent, solid success against all levels of competition while going 37-17 during the reg season.

The mixed bag (2-2) in both post season tourneys left something to be desired. Losing the regional to a 35-22 Boston College team who won a game against Miami in the Super wasn't ideal but nothing shameful.

Gonna be interesting to see the high competitive nature of Pierce's teams when mixed with the fruits of UT's superior recruiting advantages.