The Harding baseball team will begin the 2012 season ranked No. 28 in the nation by the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper. While head baseball coach Patrick McGaha and the Bison team said they are excited about this unprecedented ranking, they are more focused on proving themselves on the field instead of dwelling on previous accomplishments.
Harding’s ranking came off the heels of the most successful season in team history. The Bisons finished the 2011 season ranked No. 24 in the final Division II poll after achieving a record of 42 wins and 14 losses.
Harding reached the championship game of the Gulf South Conference tournament in its final season playing in the GSC. The program achieved its first-ever appearance in the NCAA Division II Tournament.
According to McGaha, the Bisons’ current ranking is the result of high expectations for the team after last year’s successful season.
“Those rankings are nice, but basically they’re an acknowledgment of what we did last year,” McGaha said. “It’s nice to be mentioned in that, but as far as what we’re trying to do as a team, we know it doesn’t really mean a whole lot and it’s not going to help us on the field to win any games.”
McGaha and his staff addressed the team about the ranking when it was released.
Their message: Preseason rankings are great, but the team’s true potential is realized on the field during the season.
The players are buying into that message.
“It’s a wonderful, cool thing to be told that we’re this good compared to the other teams in the nation, but we haven’t played a game yet so we haven’t proven anything,” junior starting pitcher Lucas Waddell said. “So it’s an estimate of what they think we’re capable of, and, in any case, we want to go out there and prove that we’re better than that ranking.”
As spring approaches, the Bisons said they are confident in their ability to build on the success of the 2011 season; however, their confidence is due less to the preseason ranking than to the presence of the same ingredients that led to their previous triumphs.
According to McGaha, the Bisons were successful last season because they had tremendous leadership and great overall team chemistry. The 2012 team possesses those same characteristics.
“Team chemistry is so important,” McGaha said. “It’s one of those things where if you ever could bottle that, you’d be very successful. And last year’s team had that. This fall, this team has shown that, and that’s really due in part to a lot of our upperclassmen.”
Expectations for the 2012 season are high.
And while the stellar play of last year’s team is within reach, this team is out to write its own history.
“It can be hard to think about trying to recreate something so good, but we still have confidence that we can do better and build on it,” Waddell said. “The tools are there to improve from last season. We lost something, but we gained something too; it’s always different each year. You lose something that you thought was really valuable, but then something new comes along that you didn’t realize you had.”
