Cincinnati Lures Scott Googins From Xavier

Scott Googins (Photo by Mat Gdowski/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Cincinnati on Tuesday announced it has hired Scott Googins away from Xavier to be its new head coach.

Googins has deep roots in Southwestern Ohio and will now move across the Queen City to take over the Bearcats program. He spent the last 12 seasons as the head coach of Xavier, where he is the winningest coach in program history.

Googins has 341 career wins with four NCAA Tournament appearances, including back-to-back regional finals berths in 2016 and 2017 and six regular season or conference tournament championships. Xavier went 2-2 in the just-concluded Louisville Regional, falling to Louisville 8-7 in Game Six.

“Coach Googins is a proven winner and developer of talent and a perfect fit for the University of Cincinnati,” director of athletics Mike Bohn said in a news release. “He is a coach with great passion for student-athletes, is highly regarded in the state of Ohio and possesses strong connections to pro scouts and leaders across baseball on the national scene.”

Xavier was 34-27 this season and won the Big East tournament championship to earn a regional spot.

“My family and I are thrilled to be a part of the University of Cincinnati,” Googins said in a release. “It was not an easy decision to leave Xavier, a great institution where I have many connections. I am excited to be the head coach at UC, to get to know our team and grow with them, give our student-athletes a great experience and have fun playing baseball.”

Googins was an assistant at Xavier before taking the head job, and was an assistant at Miami (Ohio) from 2000-04 and Indiana from 1992-99.

2017 COACHING CHANGES
School	Departures	Arrivals
Alabama	Greg Goff	Brad Bohannon
Cincinnati	Ty Neal	Scott Googins
Citadel	Fred Jordan
Dayton	Tony Vittorio
Incarnate Word	Danny Heep
La Salle	Mike Lake
Massachusetts	Mike Stone	Matt Reynolds
North Florida	Smoke Laval	Tim Parenton
Santa Clara	Dan O’Brien
South Carolina	Chad Holbrook
Southern	Roger Cador
Stanford	Mark Marquess (retiring after season)
Tennessee	Dave Serrano
Texas-Rio Grande Valley	Manny Mantrana
Towson	Mike Gottlieb
Virginia Tech	Patrick Mason
Xavier	Scott Googins