Pete Hughes Introduced as Head Baseball Coach
Jun 12, 2018 | Baseball
MANHATTAN, Kan. – K-State head baseball coach Pete Hughes and Director of Athletics Gene Taylor met with members of the media Tuesday at the Vanier Family Football Complex to officially introduce Hughes as the 21st head coach in program history.
New Baseball Head Coach Pete Hughes Introductory Press Conference – June 12, 2018
Steel & Pipe Team Theatre – Vanier Family Football Complex
Director of Athletics Gene Taylor
Opening statement…
"Good morning and welcome everybody. It's a great day for K-State Baseball. It's perfect timing, if you think about it, with Super Regionals just ending and everybody qualifying for Omaha. At some point, we certainly hope this young guy to my left will get us there. I certainly want to welcome Debby and the Hughes Family to K-State. We really appreciate you being here. I know Pete is going to introduce you all individually, but thanks for being here.
"Before I get started, I want to thank a few people that have helped us through this process. It's been a great process – it really has. It was exciting to be a part of it and meet some great candidates. (Executive Associate AD) Casey Scott was phenomenal. Casey is a great sport administrator. He's really been helpful throughout this process – you talk about a guy that really understands college baseball. He's been phenomenal to work with, and I really appreciate everything he's done. It was a great opportunity to spend some time and really dig down into the world of college baseball. He did a tremendous job bringing in some great candidates, so thank you very much, Casey.
"(Director of Annual Giving) Matt Giller was also a part of process, a former baseball player and part of our Ahearn Fund. He did a great job. (Senior Associate AD) Kenny Lannou, thank you again for everything you've done. I also want to thank our current baseball staff – (associate head coach) Mitch (Gaspard) and (pitching coach) Tyler (Kincaid) for holding things together the last few weeks. And, equally as important, is our players that have had the patience and understanding. Many of them are gone playing, and we have some new players here that are a part of our program now. I want to thank those guys as well. It's always tough to have a coaching change, but I certainly want to thank everybody for all their support.
"When we started this search, there were a few qualities we were looking for in our next baseball coach. We certainly wanted somebody with head coaching experience, particularly at the Power 5 level. We wanted somebody that has had experience turning programs around and building programs that were struggling into successful programs.
"I give credit to (former head coach) Brad Hill – the respect we have across the country for our baseball program is at a high level. That was very indicative of the number of people that were interested in our program. We had quality coaches that we talked to, both head coaches and assistant coaches, at both the Power 5 level and at other programs across the country that showed an interest. I want to, again, thank and congratulate Brad for what he did for our program because it was very clear early on the amount of respect the coaches have for the K-State Baseball program, and that was very clear as we started talking to candidates.
"We identified Pete early. Pete was a guy that we heard about, and he also expressed interest early in our program. We started to look into his background and talk to people across the country – and believe me, we talked to a lot of people – both people that he's worked for and people that he's worked with, folks that he's played with and so on. The common thing for Pete was that he is a relentless recruiter. He is an extremely hard worker. He's a tremendous family man. He is tremendous in the community. His teams are going to be some of the most fundamentally sound and competitive baseball programs in the country. Coaches said, 'We don't like playing against his teams.'
"We started talking to Pete early about our program, and he had done his homework. He knew a tremendous amount about where our program is, the history of our program. He had really spent some time learning about the K-State Baseball program. We are very excited to have Pete Hughes here a part of our program, and we are really looking forward to what he can do.
"It's my pleasure to introduce everybody to our new baseball coach, Pete Hughes."
Head Coach Pete Hughes
Opening statement...
"It is great to be here. I want to thank President (Richard B.) Myers, I want to thank (Director of Athletics) Gene Taylor. Gene is the number one reason I chose to come to Kansas State, because of his value system, his leadership, his track record. I want to thank (Executive Associate AD) Casey Scott for running a first-class search and for including me. Everything was done in a first-class manner. Your (Scott's) experience and your vision of the baseball program is the number two reason why I wanted to come here and be the baseball coach at Kansas State.
"I want to thank the University of Georgia and what they have done for me in the past year. (Director of Athletics) Greg McGarity, (Deputy Athletic Director) Ted White, (head baseball coach) Scott Stricklin and his staff, are some of the finest people in college baseball. Home is defined as a place that you show up and they take you in. My son Dominic and I showed up there in August and they took us in, we made lifelong friendships in a critical nine-month period in my coaching career, so I want to thank the University of Georgia.
"I know Gene (Taylor) had introduced my wife (Debby), I want to thank my family. Last night was the first time since Christmas that we were together to have dinner. It reminded me how fun dinner can be with a dynamic of seven, how loud it can be, and how many times I have to say, 'get off your phones and talk to your brother and sister and mother and father,' I did that a lot last night, it was a lot of fun. Then I got the bill and I was reminded what it was like to have dinner with seven people [laughter]. I want to thank my wife Debby, who, she has always been the glue to our family, specifically this last year. She has always persevered and navigated the ups and downs of this profession with a smile on her face, so her children can see nothing but optimism. My wife, she signed up for that a long time ago, but nonetheless doesn't have to go through what she goes through. My kids did not sign up for this crazy profession, the sacrifices that they make on a daily basis so that dad can put a uniform on and raise a family are countless. My oldest son, Thomas, I could sit here for a long time and name his sacrifices, but because of the circumstances I will say he gave up his truck this past year and he was the man of the house when I was gone for nine months. My son, Hal, we had to ship him off to a school in Louisiana [LSU], that supposedly has a great baseball tradition, so Hal did that. Dominic came with me to Georgia, was separated from his mom, went to a different high school, took him away from his peer group. Starting in August he will begin his fourth high school. [Daughter] Grace, she spent nine months away from her dad. For most freshman girls in high school that might be a good thing, not in this case. She is going into her second high school. [Son] P.J., we changed schools with P.J. and he was away from his dad for nine months, so these guys make a lot of sacrifices which will never go under appreciated from their dad and their mom's standpoint.
"June 12, today, is always going to be remembered as a great day in our household, because today, we instantly become members of a tremendous college community and are a part of that. June 12 will be a great day because instantly, we become members of a nationally-renown academic institution. June 12, today, is going to be a great day for our family because we have joined an athletic department that wins and has a strong tradition and fanatical following. It is an absolute honor to be the head baseball coach at Kansas State, I am going to build this program like I have in past experiences. It is going to come from a strong foundation, our foundation is going to be deeply rooted in our academic message, what we do in the community and how we prepare on the baseball field, in the weight room and all of our training. Academically, our student-athletes will never, ever, take lightly the responsibility of being a student-athlete. Our student-athletes will be a presence and will thrive in the community. Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve, our student-athletes will be a presence in this community, they will be privileged and never entitled members of the Manhattan community. Lastly, our student-athletes will prepare at an Omaha pace, at an Omaha standard, so we can play at an Omaha level. It is an honor to have gained the confidence of the leadership of this athletic department and the leadership of this university and I cannot wait to be the 21st head baseball coach of Kansas State."
On his style of play…
"Style of play and philosophy are kind of two different things. My philosophy is the adage, pitching and defense wins you games so that has to start from the recruiting side of things and it has to begin with the fundamentals of defensively play and it has to be preached in recruiting and on the field. My style of play its aggressive, it is a play-to-win mentality, it is not sit back on your heels, it is put pressure on people. Everything is predicated on the recruiting model, you bring in tough, overachievers, that has always been the remedy for me to cure some situations and that what we will do. We will identify the toughest players from winning programs and bring them on the baseball field, who will compete like crazy. They are going to be the toughest kids on the field and most of the time they are going to win. If you mix in the balance of being fundamentally sound and playing defense and not walking people, that is the formula for success, so that is what we will work towards."
On his philosophy on rebuilding a program…
"To rebuild a program, you have to rebuild the culture. It is going to be preached every day. I am not going to look at last year or the year before, I am going to look at what is in front of me right now and address the needs from a depth situation, from a talent situation, from a positional standpoint and those are addressed in recruiting. Unfortunately, when you lose three, four, five-year stretches, your perception of the recruiting market is not very good, so you have to change that. How do you do that? You hustle, you go out and meet as many people as possible. You recruit their kids, you do a good job with their kids and it gets you more and more players. So, it takes a while to change the perception of who you are as a program in the recruiting market, but that has to be done first and foremost. Then you preach it every single day in the program and you hold your kinds to an Omaha standard no matter if they came in ninth or eighth in the Big 12 the year before. They are going to be held to an Omaha standard academically, socially, how they prepare in the weight room, how they perform in practice, how they go about their everyday life. They are going to be held to that standard, then the goal is to wake up one day and be at an Omaha standard and we are in Omaha rather than sitting in press conferences in the middle of June."
On winning now…
"I am not going to put a time frame on it, I have an idea of what I want to do, I am too competitive to be very patient. I want to win next year; how do I do that? I have to bring in some talent, recruiting is done so far out now, it is done two classes out. So, I am kind of at the mercy what has been done in the past two years in this region specifically. You have to hustle, you have to see if your kids are late bloomers in the recruiting market, but you have to go to the junior colleges. You have to try to infuse some veteran talent to bridge the gap to bring the underclassmen to your campus in year two, year three and mesh those guys together then you should be in a good spot. Is there a quick fix in college baseball these days? I don't know, just because the recruiting starts two years out. It is going to have to be done immediately through the junior colleges. But it is a dangerous game to play because you cannot have too many kids on your roster from junior colleges because there is so much turnover, and you don't build any emotional investment in your program that way when guys are in and out. That is what you want to do, because when people are emotionally-invested in your program, they play harder for you and they over-achieve, and they win games for you. So that is tough to do with too many junior college kids, but they do serve their purpose when you do your research, get the right kid and mesh them with the younger guys. They bring a lot of veteran leadership, so there is a purpose for both ways. The quick fix is to bring in all of these junior college guys, but we will probably have a good balance."
On coming into a program with new facility improvements…
"When you are outside, and you are looking at a job, you want to see if people care about what you do for a living as much as you do and when administration puts in investment in that, it speaks volumes. Then when you bring recruits in, they want to see where the money is going. I am the dad of a couple of recruits and when I see their facilities and their investing in something that my son loves, now I am interested. That is the perspective that I take when I look at Kansas State investing over the next two years."
On philosophy of scheduling non-conference opponents…
"Well, we are all prisoners to the RPI, whether it is a flawed system or not, that is for another press conference. You have to schedule non-conference with the RPI in mind so you together as a conference has a strong RPI. But also, you have to schedule [in the non-conference] that is conducive to winning because you have to get a winning mindset back here, there is nothing like winning that makes your guys feel good and they play with confidence and they overachieve, so you have to be careful of what you do mid-week, because there are not many weekends off in the Big 12. It is a delicate balance of trying to create confidence and getting some wins and development depth in your program, but not get too far away from the RPI to give yourself a chance at an at-large bid."
On taking over at K-State compared to other situations…
"Well, to answer your question, it is not different, it is very similar to the situation at Virginia Tech. The year before we got to Virginia Tech, they were 3-24 in the league, finishing last in the league, 0-15 on the road. When you are 0 and 15 on the road there is zero toughness, zero depth in your program. But it is different here because I already have the recruiting network and relationships established. I didn't have that at Virginia Tech, it took me two years to establish those. I just finished recruiting this region for four years. I didn't know about the ACC when I took the job at the Virginia Tech. I know everything about the Big 12. There are zero growing pains in how we attack our opponents and how you can win in this league because I have done it. When you look at a rebuild, when you look at a program that needs to be revamped, when you look at a program that needs to get back to 2013 and the highest level of college baseball, it is very similar to Virginia Tech, but there is going to be no transitional growing pains for me. That is a relief, now I don't have to waste my time building relationships, they are already established, and I can try to change the product that we have on the field right now."
Director of Athletics Gene Taylor
On his expectations for the baseball program…
"Initially, patience. It's going to take some time to build it to where he wants this program, and I want this program, to be. But ultimately, we need to not just hope to get into the Big 12 Tournament, we need to be in the Big 12 Tournament, and we need to play for a conference championship. I think what happened in 2013 and before, that isn't an anomaly. I think we can get back there. I learned a lot about our program from all the candidates we talked to. It's not something you're going to create tomorrow. So, we have to have patience. I think he has a great formula for how to get there, and I expect that to happen in the next couple years."
On the amount of candidates for the job…
"I would say there were a lot of candidates. We probably seriously talked to about six, and some we talked to multiple times. Ultimately, we honed in on Pete and a couple other guys, and Pete came to the top."
On what he was looking for during the search…
"What we really wanted was a proven track record for turning programs around at this level. We talked to guys that had done that, and Pete had an understanding of where our program was because he had been at Oklahoma, because he really did his homework. I mean, he knew what kind of scholarships we had, and he knew what kind of players we had and where they were from. He knew what it was going to take to get there. It was just his understanding of, not only the market from a recruiting standpoint, but the Big 12. All of that elevated him to the level of where we selected him."
On if he was surprised Pete wasn't a head coach last year…
"Not really. Obviously I spent a lot of time talking to (Athletics Director) Joe Castiglione at Oklahoma, and he had nothing but good things to say. Every rock we turned over about him were nothing but positives. What happened at Oklahoma happened for various reasons, but it wasn't because he wasn't a good coach and Joe would tell you that. The impact he had on Georgia in one year, if you ask the Georgia head coach (Scott Stricklin), he'll point to Pete being a part of that. I would tell you that is why we are very fortunate to have someone of his quality, because if he were still at Oklahoma, I don't think we would have been able to get him."
New Baseball Head Coach Pete Hughes Introductory Press Conference – June 12, 2018
Steel & Pipe Team Theatre – Vanier Family Football Complex
Director of Athletics Gene Taylor
Opening statement…
"Good morning and welcome everybody. It's a great day for K-State Baseball. It's perfect timing, if you think about it, with Super Regionals just ending and everybody qualifying for Omaha. At some point, we certainly hope this young guy to my left will get us there. I certainly want to welcome Debby and the Hughes Family to K-State. We really appreciate you being here. I know Pete is going to introduce you all individually, but thanks for being here.
"Before I get started, I want to thank a few people that have helped us through this process. It's been a great process – it really has. It was exciting to be a part of it and meet some great candidates. (Executive Associate AD) Casey Scott was phenomenal. Casey is a great sport administrator. He's really been helpful throughout this process – you talk about a guy that really understands college baseball. He's been phenomenal to work with, and I really appreciate everything he's done. It was a great opportunity to spend some time and really dig down into the world of college baseball. He did a tremendous job bringing in some great candidates, so thank you very much, Casey.
"(Director of Annual Giving) Matt Giller was also a part of process, a former baseball player and part of our Ahearn Fund. He did a great job. (Senior Associate AD) Kenny Lannou, thank you again for everything you've done. I also want to thank our current baseball staff – (associate head coach) Mitch (Gaspard) and (pitching coach) Tyler (Kincaid) for holding things together the last few weeks. And, equally as important, is our players that have had the patience and understanding. Many of them are gone playing, and we have some new players here that are a part of our program now. I want to thank those guys as well. It's always tough to have a coaching change, but I certainly want to thank everybody for all their support.
"When we started this search, there were a few qualities we were looking for in our next baseball coach. We certainly wanted somebody with head coaching experience, particularly at the Power 5 level. We wanted somebody that has had experience turning programs around and building programs that were struggling into successful programs.
"I give credit to (former head coach) Brad Hill – the respect we have across the country for our baseball program is at a high level. That was very indicative of the number of people that were interested in our program. We had quality coaches that we talked to, both head coaches and assistant coaches, at both the Power 5 level and at other programs across the country that showed an interest. I want to, again, thank and congratulate Brad for what he did for our program because it was very clear early on the amount of respect the coaches have for the K-State Baseball program, and that was very clear as we started talking to candidates.
"We identified Pete early. Pete was a guy that we heard about, and he also expressed interest early in our program. We started to look into his background and talk to people across the country – and believe me, we talked to a lot of people – both people that he's worked for and people that he's worked with, folks that he's played with and so on. The common thing for Pete was that he is a relentless recruiter. He is an extremely hard worker. He's a tremendous family man. He is tremendous in the community. His teams are going to be some of the most fundamentally sound and competitive baseball programs in the country. Coaches said, 'We don't like playing against his teams.'
"We started talking to Pete early about our program, and he had done his homework. He knew a tremendous amount about where our program is, the history of our program. He had really spent some time learning about the K-State Baseball program. We are very excited to have Pete Hughes here a part of our program, and we are really looking forward to what he can do.
"It's my pleasure to introduce everybody to our new baseball coach, Pete Hughes."
Head Coach Pete Hughes
Opening statement...
"It is great to be here. I want to thank President (Richard B.) Myers, I want to thank (Director of Athletics) Gene Taylor. Gene is the number one reason I chose to come to Kansas State, because of his value system, his leadership, his track record. I want to thank (Executive Associate AD) Casey Scott for running a first-class search and for including me. Everything was done in a first-class manner. Your (Scott's) experience and your vision of the baseball program is the number two reason why I wanted to come here and be the baseball coach at Kansas State.
"I want to thank the University of Georgia and what they have done for me in the past year. (Director of Athletics) Greg McGarity, (Deputy Athletic Director) Ted White, (head baseball coach) Scott Stricklin and his staff, are some of the finest people in college baseball. Home is defined as a place that you show up and they take you in. My son Dominic and I showed up there in August and they took us in, we made lifelong friendships in a critical nine-month period in my coaching career, so I want to thank the University of Georgia.
"I know Gene (Taylor) had introduced my wife (Debby), I want to thank my family. Last night was the first time since Christmas that we were together to have dinner. It reminded me how fun dinner can be with a dynamic of seven, how loud it can be, and how many times I have to say, 'get off your phones and talk to your brother and sister and mother and father,' I did that a lot last night, it was a lot of fun. Then I got the bill and I was reminded what it was like to have dinner with seven people [laughter]. I want to thank my wife Debby, who, she has always been the glue to our family, specifically this last year. She has always persevered and navigated the ups and downs of this profession with a smile on her face, so her children can see nothing but optimism. My wife, she signed up for that a long time ago, but nonetheless doesn't have to go through what she goes through. My kids did not sign up for this crazy profession, the sacrifices that they make on a daily basis so that dad can put a uniform on and raise a family are countless. My oldest son, Thomas, I could sit here for a long time and name his sacrifices, but because of the circumstances I will say he gave up his truck this past year and he was the man of the house when I was gone for nine months. My son, Hal, we had to ship him off to a school in Louisiana [LSU], that supposedly has a great baseball tradition, so Hal did that. Dominic came with me to Georgia, was separated from his mom, went to a different high school, took him away from his peer group. Starting in August he will begin his fourth high school. [Daughter] Grace, she spent nine months away from her dad. For most freshman girls in high school that might be a good thing, not in this case. She is going into her second high school. [Son] P.J., we changed schools with P.J. and he was away from his dad for nine months, so these guys make a lot of sacrifices which will never go under appreciated from their dad and their mom's standpoint.
"June 12, today, is always going to be remembered as a great day in our household, because today, we instantly become members of a tremendous college community and are a part of that. June 12 will be a great day because instantly, we become members of a nationally-renown academic institution. June 12, today, is going to be a great day for our family because we have joined an athletic department that wins and has a strong tradition and fanatical following. It is an absolute honor to be the head baseball coach at Kansas State, I am going to build this program like I have in past experiences. It is going to come from a strong foundation, our foundation is going to be deeply rooted in our academic message, what we do in the community and how we prepare on the baseball field, in the weight room and all of our training. Academically, our student-athletes will never, ever, take lightly the responsibility of being a student-athlete. Our student-athletes will be a presence and will thrive in the community. Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve, our student-athletes will be a presence in this community, they will be privileged and never entitled members of the Manhattan community. Lastly, our student-athletes will prepare at an Omaha pace, at an Omaha standard, so we can play at an Omaha level. It is an honor to have gained the confidence of the leadership of this athletic department and the leadership of this university and I cannot wait to be the 21st head baseball coach of Kansas State."
On his style of play…
"Style of play and philosophy are kind of two different things. My philosophy is the adage, pitching and defense wins you games so that has to start from the recruiting side of things and it has to begin with the fundamentals of defensively play and it has to be preached in recruiting and on the field. My style of play its aggressive, it is a play-to-win mentality, it is not sit back on your heels, it is put pressure on people. Everything is predicated on the recruiting model, you bring in tough, overachievers, that has always been the remedy for me to cure some situations and that what we will do. We will identify the toughest players from winning programs and bring them on the baseball field, who will compete like crazy. They are going to be the toughest kids on the field and most of the time they are going to win. If you mix in the balance of being fundamentally sound and playing defense and not walking people, that is the formula for success, so that is what we will work towards."
On his philosophy on rebuilding a program…
"To rebuild a program, you have to rebuild the culture. It is going to be preached every day. I am not going to look at last year or the year before, I am going to look at what is in front of me right now and address the needs from a depth situation, from a talent situation, from a positional standpoint and those are addressed in recruiting. Unfortunately, when you lose three, four, five-year stretches, your perception of the recruiting market is not very good, so you have to change that. How do you do that? You hustle, you go out and meet as many people as possible. You recruit their kids, you do a good job with their kids and it gets you more and more players. So, it takes a while to change the perception of who you are as a program in the recruiting market, but that has to be done first and foremost. Then you preach it every single day in the program and you hold your kinds to an Omaha standard no matter if they came in ninth or eighth in the Big 12 the year before. They are going to be held to an Omaha standard academically, socially, how they prepare in the weight room, how they perform in practice, how they go about their everyday life. They are going to be held to that standard, then the goal is to wake up one day and be at an Omaha standard and we are in Omaha rather than sitting in press conferences in the middle of June."
On winning now…
"I am not going to put a time frame on it, I have an idea of what I want to do, I am too competitive to be very patient. I want to win next year; how do I do that? I have to bring in some talent, recruiting is done so far out now, it is done two classes out. So, I am kind of at the mercy what has been done in the past two years in this region specifically. You have to hustle, you have to see if your kids are late bloomers in the recruiting market, but you have to go to the junior colleges. You have to try to infuse some veteran talent to bridge the gap to bring the underclassmen to your campus in year two, year three and mesh those guys together then you should be in a good spot. Is there a quick fix in college baseball these days? I don't know, just because the recruiting starts two years out. It is going to have to be done immediately through the junior colleges. But it is a dangerous game to play because you cannot have too many kids on your roster from junior colleges because there is so much turnover, and you don't build any emotional investment in your program that way when guys are in and out. That is what you want to do, because when people are emotionally-invested in your program, they play harder for you and they over-achieve, and they win games for you. So that is tough to do with too many junior college kids, but they do serve their purpose when you do your research, get the right kid and mesh them with the younger guys. They bring a lot of veteran leadership, so there is a purpose for both ways. The quick fix is to bring in all of these junior college guys, but we will probably have a good balance."
On coming into a program with new facility improvements…
"When you are outside, and you are looking at a job, you want to see if people care about what you do for a living as much as you do and when administration puts in investment in that, it speaks volumes. Then when you bring recruits in, they want to see where the money is going. I am the dad of a couple of recruits and when I see their facilities and their investing in something that my son loves, now I am interested. That is the perspective that I take when I look at Kansas State investing over the next two years."
On philosophy of scheduling non-conference opponents…
"Well, we are all prisoners to the RPI, whether it is a flawed system or not, that is for another press conference. You have to schedule non-conference with the RPI in mind so you together as a conference has a strong RPI. But also, you have to schedule [in the non-conference] that is conducive to winning because you have to get a winning mindset back here, there is nothing like winning that makes your guys feel good and they play with confidence and they overachieve, so you have to be careful of what you do mid-week, because there are not many weekends off in the Big 12. It is a delicate balance of trying to create confidence and getting some wins and development depth in your program, but not get too far away from the RPI to give yourself a chance at an at-large bid."
On taking over at K-State compared to other situations…
"Well, to answer your question, it is not different, it is very similar to the situation at Virginia Tech. The year before we got to Virginia Tech, they were 3-24 in the league, finishing last in the league, 0-15 on the road. When you are 0 and 15 on the road there is zero toughness, zero depth in your program. But it is different here because I already have the recruiting network and relationships established. I didn't have that at Virginia Tech, it took me two years to establish those. I just finished recruiting this region for four years. I didn't know about the ACC when I took the job at the Virginia Tech. I know everything about the Big 12. There are zero growing pains in how we attack our opponents and how you can win in this league because I have done it. When you look at a rebuild, when you look at a program that needs to be revamped, when you look at a program that needs to get back to 2013 and the highest level of college baseball, it is very similar to Virginia Tech, but there is going to be no transitional growing pains for me. That is a relief, now I don't have to waste my time building relationships, they are already established, and I can try to change the product that we have on the field right now."
Director of Athletics Gene Taylor
On his expectations for the baseball program…
"Initially, patience. It's going to take some time to build it to where he wants this program, and I want this program, to be. But ultimately, we need to not just hope to get into the Big 12 Tournament, we need to be in the Big 12 Tournament, and we need to play for a conference championship. I think what happened in 2013 and before, that isn't an anomaly. I think we can get back there. I learned a lot about our program from all the candidates we talked to. It's not something you're going to create tomorrow. So, we have to have patience. I think he has a great formula for how to get there, and I expect that to happen in the next couple years."
On the amount of candidates for the job…
"I would say there were a lot of candidates. We probably seriously talked to about six, and some we talked to multiple times. Ultimately, we honed in on Pete and a couple other guys, and Pete came to the top."
On what he was looking for during the search…
"What we really wanted was a proven track record for turning programs around at this level. We talked to guys that had done that, and Pete had an understanding of where our program was because he had been at Oklahoma, because he really did his homework. I mean, he knew what kind of scholarships we had, and he knew what kind of players we had and where they were from. He knew what it was going to take to get there. It was just his understanding of, not only the market from a recruiting standpoint, but the Big 12. All of that elevated him to the level of where we selected him."
On if he was surprised Pete wasn't a head coach last year…
"Not really. Obviously I spent a lot of time talking to (Athletics Director) Joe Castiglione at Oklahoma, and he had nothing but good things to say. Every rock we turned over about him were nothing but positives. What happened at Oklahoma happened for various reasons, but it wasn't because he wasn't a good coach and Joe would tell you that. The impact he had on Georgia in one year, if you ask the Georgia head coach (Scott Stricklin), he'll point to Pete being a part of that. I would tell you that is why we are very fortunate to have someone of his quality, because if he were still at Oklahoma, I don't think we would have been able to get him."
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