Kansas baseball coach Bobby Randall admits he was a bit choked up after Sunday’s season-ending 6-4 victory over Texas-Pan American.
“Yesterday was an emotional day for our players because there were so many seniors leaving. And it was hard for me to say goodbye,” said Randall, who had seven seniors go out winners at Hoglund Ballpark. “Those kids played right to the very end.”
Randall his Jayhawks finished 26-30 overall, 7-23 in the Big 12 says he was shocked to see his emotion portrayed negatively in one newspaper account of the season finale.
A Journal-World reporter said Randall announced there would be no player interviews after Sunday’s game and said the coach avoided talking about his future.
Not true, KU’s sixth year coach said.
“I was very disappointed (in reading the story). It looked to me like there was a story written before I even went to talk to the media yesterday,” Randall said Monday. “I’ve always been very cooperative. It makes you not want to be cooperative.
“My first question to the media was, ‘Do you want to talk to any of our players?’ Nobody said anything. Later after they talked to me, I looked over and (senior) John Nelson was being interviewed.
“So, you can see, as always our players were available to the media. To be portrayed inaccurately really hurts,” Randall said.
Randall said Monday he was looking forward to continuing as KU’s coach.
“We just won six out of seven,” he said of sweeping Pan American, taking two of three from Kansas State and beating Park University.
“We played our most inspired baseball against K-State the last game of the Big 12 season. Our guys were fun to coach because they played so stinkin’ hard.
“We played the 59th toughest schedule in America. We were 18-7 non conference and 7-23 conference and that was the disappointment, that we lost so many winnable games.”
KU lost 12 one-run games while winning just two.
“If you ask the players what kind of season they had, I think they’d tell you they were disappointed they didn’t make the (Big 12) tournament, but our goals were higher than making the tournament,” Randall said. “We wanted to finish in the top five or six and thought we could. Unfortunately that wasn’t the way it ended up. We got a good nucleus of kids coming back that are good players and some good recruits coming in.”
Can he make KU a winner?
“Sure, sure,” Randall said. “I don’t think any coach goes in trying to survive. I don’t think any player does. Who would know that Iowa State was gonna blend all those new players?
“We were one of the few teams in the conference that played all 30 games. I think there were a lot of tough losses but on the other hand there were some exciting things we did. I think the seniors felt good about the effort they gave. They just didn’t win as many conference games as they wanted to.”
Randall said he thought seniors Nelson and Pete Smart would be taken in the June major league draft. Randall thought senior catcher Brent Del Chiaro might be drafted, was certain junior pitcher Doug Lantz would be selected and there is a good chance junior infielder Ryan Klocksien also would be tapped.
“Those are exciting things for those kids,” Randall said. “What I’ll remember about this team is they played hard, hard to the end. They did things the right way and represented this school very well.”