Dan McDonnell Elevates Cardinals To Elite Level

Under Dan McDonnell, Louisville has produced several top draft picks, including No. 4 overall pick Brendan McKay (2017) and No. 5 overall pick Corey Ray (2016). (Getty Images)

Louisville head coach Dan McDonnell had only been home from Omaha for a couple of days, yet he was already planning his next move. July is no time for rest.

McDonnell had his eyes on the Futures Game in Miami, where 2016 first-rounder Corey Ray will play. He thought about sticking around for the major league Home Run Derby, too, in case 2010 Louisville draftee Adam Duvall participated again. He sent a text to Brendan McKay, the No. 4 overall pick and 2017 College Player of the Year, to congratulate him on the $7.005 million bonus he just signed.“Be who you are,” McDonnell told him. “Don’t let the crooked number and the zeros—don’t let that change you, man.”

Those players are all products of the McDonnell Era, a few of the pillars that have helped prop Louisville baseball into elite territory. McDonnell is quick to credit those players, his assistant coaches and his athletic director, Tom Jurich, for Louisville’s success. And while they’ve all played crucial roles, it’s no coincidence that the Cardinals have emerged as a national power under the guidance of McDonnell—Baseball America’s College Coach of the Year. The award reflects a decade of excellence.

Since McDonnell took over the program in 2007, Louisville has the third-most wins of any school in the country. In the last five years, no team has more wins. After making only one NCAA Tournament appearance previously, in 2002, the Cardinals have made 10 appearances in McDonnell’s 11 seasons. This year marked Louisville’s fourth trip to the College World Series—all under McDonnell, including his debut season.

“In one sense, you don’t ever want to think, ‘I never saw that coming,’” McDonnell said. “But in another sense, it happened quickly. That first year, the success we had and the response by Tom Jurich and the athletic department was like, ‘Hey, we’re in as much as you’re in on this.’ And so we just grew together. And that’s why we are where we’re at now.”

McDonnell often tells his players, “God’s dreams are bigger for us than our own dreams for ourselves.”
“And I’ve always thought I’m a pretty big dreamer,” he said.

He came to Louisville after spending six years as Mississippi’s recruiting coordinator under Mike Bianco, who taught him the Skip Bertman system of coaching. The eight years before that, McDonnell coached under Fred Jordan at The Citadel, where he’d played for the 1990 CWS team. There he soaked up the toughness and work ethic required to thrive at a military school.

All of those experiences instilled in McDonnell a hunger for greatness. Fortunately for him, his athletic director felt the same hunger. Louisville was once viewed as a stepping-stone school. Now, thanks to McDonnell’s vision and the school’s investment in the sport, it’s become a destination.

“I don’t think anybody could’ve foreseen something this exceptional—what he’s done,” Jurich said of McDonnell. “He’s not only just a wonderful addition to the university and the athletic department, but he’s a wonderful addition to the community, and he’s really put baseball on the map here.”

Jurich signed McDonnell to a 10-year extension with a $1 million annual base salary prior to the 2017 season. The deal is fitting, given that McDonnell and his staff have helped make several Cardinals millionaires over the last few drafts.

Louisville quickly has evolved into one of the country’s top programs in terms of player development. Kyle Funkhouser (35th overall, 2015), Ray (No. 5 overall, 2016) and McKay (No. 4 overall, 2017) make it three straight years that Louisville has set a record for its highest draft pick ever.

The Cardinals have achieved those feats while mainly recruiting Kentucky, Pennsylvania and the Midwest, particularly Illinois. Those areas aren’t known as baseball hotbeds, but McDonnell and his staff help mold those recruits into winners with the culture they’ve established at Louisville.

“They’re not getting the high-profile guys some schools may get, the big rankings or all the accolades they have, but they get guys that they know are players,” said McKay, who hails from the Pittsburgh area.

“You’ve got to earn everything you get here. You’re not given anything. You’ve got to come in (and) show why you should be in the lineup.”

That competitive culture proved imperative this year, with a Cardinals team that lost three 2016 first-rounders and seven players total to the draft. McDonnell never called it a rebuilding year—and he meant it. The Cardinals finished 53-12 and earned the No. 7 national seed. They won the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Atlantic Division for the third time in the three years since joining the ACC in 2015. The Cardinals lost another eight players to the draft this June, including McKay, Drew Ellis, Colby Fitch and Devin Hairston. Still, McDonnell is not ready to call 2018 a rebuilding year.

“Sometimes it is what it is, we are who we are, and we’re only going to be able to go so far,” McDonnell said.

“But I don’t know if I can sleep with myself if I didn’t think I challenged these guys, pushed these guys and at least gave them every opportunity to believe that they’d have a chance to win a national championship.”

McDonnell hasn’t stopped dreaming those big dreams. And why should he?

They keep coming true.

College Coach of the Year
1981	Ron Fraser, Miami
1982	Gene Stephenson, Wichita State
1983	Barry Shollenberger, Alabama
1984	Augie Garrido, Cal State Fullerton
1985	Ron Polk, Mississippi State
1986	Skip Bertman, Louisiana State
	Dave Snow, Loyola Marymount
1987	Mark Marquess, Stanford
1988	Jim Brock, Arizona State
1989	Dave Snow, Long Beach State
1990	Steve Webber, Georgia
1991	Jim Hendry, Creighton
1992	Andy Lopez, Pepperdine
1993	Gene Stephenson, Wichita State
1994	Jim Morris, Miami
1995	Rod Delmonico, Tennessee
1996	Skip Bertman, Louisiana State
1997	Jim Wells, Alabama
1998	Pat Murphy, Arizona State
1999	Wayne Graham, Rice
2000	Ray Tanner, South Carolina
2001	Dave Van Horn, Nebraska
2002	Augie Garrido, Texas
2003	George Horton, Cal State Fullerton
2004	David Perno, Georgia
2005	Rick Jones, Tulane
2006	Pat Casey, Oregon State
2007	Dave Serrano, UC Irvine
2008	Mike Fox, North Carolina
2009	Paul Mainieri, Louisiana State
2010	Ray Tanner, South Carolina
2011	Kevin O’Sullivan, Florida
2012	Mike Martin, Florida State
2013	John Savage, UCLA
2014	Tim Corbin, Vanderbilt
2015	Brian O’Connor, Virginia
2016	Jim Schlossnagle, Texas Christian
2017	Dan McDonnell, Louisville