Last season UH took the step of nearly assuming college baseball’s fabled rites of spring. At one point the Cougars came within 18 innings of playing in Omaha, Nebraska for the College World Series.
The team, having already improved drastically from the season before, put up a 48-18 record. This was their best record in over ten years, and they took the Silver Glove from Rice for the first time in 14 years. They simultaneously moved away from the ghosts of their past and into the aristocracy of college baseball by being ranked for a good portion of the season, getting as high as the top 10 in all of the major polls.
Head coach Todd Whitting received midseason recognition for the turnaround act. Their moments, many happening before large crowds or on television, served to enhance UH’s name. This was no small task, given the serious competition like with Rice University and the University of Texas.
Winning the American Athletic Conference championship in Clearwater, Fla. and then staging a remarkable comeback in the regional in Baton Rogue, Louisiana were top highlights of their season. They relied upon the then-unknown right hander Jared Robinson to slash their way through a few high-pressure situations.
While falling to UT in the Super Regionals and losing a few players in the draft, the team goes into fall ball with a relatively intact nucleus of players with proven — albeit some brief — records of performance.