ACC Baseball News: BC in Search of a New Head Baseball coach

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Back on June 16, then Boston College head baseball coach Mike Giambino signed a five-year extension to stay on as the BC head coach. This move came on the heels of the team going 37-20 and reaching the finals of the NCAA Regionals in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where they lost to Alabama Crimson Tide. The 37 wins match the program’s best single-season win total. The trip to the tournament was the second in the 13 years that Gambino was at the helm. However, all that has changed as the coach has packed his bags and decided to leave Boston College and take over the head coaching duties at Penn State of the Big-10. The question is, what went wrong?

Maybe that is a question that does not have an easy answer associated with it. Instead, let’s examine the two schools and what they offer. When Gambion arrived at the Heights in 2011, he really had very little to work with. His ballpark, Shea Field, was a terrible division one park by any standards. It made recruiting next to impossible. Over time, Gambino was able to convince the school that a new park was needed. In 2018, he got his wish as Harrington Athletic Village opened. In 2021 the Pete Frates Center became a reality. The 31,000-square-foot indoor hitting facility includes a player lounge and locker rooms. The building was named after Pete Frates who was a player and director of operations for the program who lost his battle to ALS in 2019. At this point, things seemed to be moving in the right direction for the coach and the program. On the field, the Eagles were starting to make their mark in the ACC. In 2016 they made the tournament and won the Starkville Regional. Then, they lost in the Super-Regional to Miami in three very tough games. It was after that run that the idea of a new park was in full swing.

The Gambino resume at BC is a good one. In the 13 years he was at BC, 33 players have been drafted. Since 2015, three have been taken in the first round and six have been taken over the first five rounds during that span. Since 2018, six former Eagles have earned big-league call-ups. This season alone Jake Alu has been called up by the Washington Nationals and Emmet Sheeham by the Los Angeles Dodgers. When the draft takes place in about ten days it is expected that members of this year’s team will hear their names called at some point in the process. So what happened?

Soon after the loss to the Crimson Tide, two assistants on Gambino’s staff left the program and took jobs with other schools. The theory is budget cuts may have been the reason. Still, Gambino went ahead and signed the extension then regretted it afterwards. So much so that on July 3rd he was named the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions. The announcement was made by Vice President of Intercollegiate Athletics Pat Kraft. He worked with Gambino when both were at BC. Penn State has been looking for a new coach ever since the Big-10 tournament came to an end in May. PSU finished with a .500 record of 25-25 this past spring. They were 7-16 in the conference, and 2-17 on the road. They ended the season losing 10 of their last 11 games. A new voice is probably needed for this program. Enter Gambino to be that new voice.

During Monday’s press conference, Gambino stated the same goal he had at Boston College, to turn this program into a national contender and find a path to Ohama to compete for a national championship. The path in the Big-10 may be easier than that of the ACC. Getting players to Happy Valley will be as difficult as it was at Chestnut Hill until the new facilities were built. At the moment, it would seem that Gambino left behind a better situation than the one he walked into. Unless Penn State is willing to spend some money to improve things. With less than two months until fall ball, the Eagles will need to scramble to find a new head coach for next season while PSU has found their guy to turn things around.