How the Charlotte 49ers shrugged off doubters to become a college baseball contender

Although the Charlotte 49ers officially became Conference USA champions on May 15, after a win over Rice, the process began long before they put two runs on the board in the top of the ninth to chalk up the clinching victory.

Picked fifth in their division in preseason polls, the 49ers didn’t let that bother them, knowing they were a better team than those projections, a position that has since been substantiated by results — and by their current national ranking (16th as of Saturday).

You could say the process began when head coach Robert Woodard realized coaching was in his future while attending Myers Park High School in Charlotte. He mentioned watching coach Dean Smith and his North Carolina basketball teams in the 1990s.

“I always admired him and the way his former players revered him, and that it would be pretty neat to have the opportunity to impact lives of others similar to Coach Smith,” Woodard said.

Charlotte was coming off a season during which it posted a 21-31 overall record, and an 11-18 record in Conference USA when he got the call. He was filled with emotion.

“There’s only one Division I college baseball team in my hometown,” Woodard said. “When we compete in games, we play for what we call the nine across the chest, which is the nine letters for the city of Charlotte.”

Clean cut

His first season as a head coach was cut short due to the pandemic. Expectations were low, and the mission to prove doubters wrong started immediately.

“Our coaching staff knew this was a talented group” Woodard said. “We’ve been on a mission to show people with our play and not talk about it.”

Charlotte got off to a 6-0 start last season before running into a tough stretch, going 2-6 over their next eight games.

“When we lost two games to Western Carolina and then the one game against Wake Forest, that was the fork-in-the-road moment for us,” Woodard said.

An uninspired, unenthusiastic game against Wake Forest was the turning point.

“Our brand of baseball would be clean cut and competitive,” Woodard said. “Haircuts, clean shaven, with a high attention to detail. You hear me say full throttle a lot.”

They were anything but those things during that loss to Wake Forest.

“I mentioned earlier we wanted to be fiercely competitive and we were not,” Woodard said. “We weren’t clean cut either, and that’s my fault. I allowed it. We had some success. Some guys wanted to bend it and let facial hair grow out and here we go. You get away from the things that you built your program on and these things start to happen.

“It was at this moment we felt we needed to address the team and make it crystal clear to them what the expectations were moving forward, and if they’re serious about wanting to play in these regionals and super regionals and the College World Series, there better be some changes.”

The next day, the players showed up early, were clean cut and ready to go.

“I give our guys all the credit in the world, and two and a half months later, some pretty cool things are happening,” Woodard said. “You can have really good players and all the technology, but if you don’t do the little things, you’re going to underachieve.”

Embracing technology

The 49ers are at the forefront of the latest technology in baseball. They were the first Division I college program to form a partnership with Premier Pitching Performance out of St. Louis. They sent 18 pitchers to train there instead of playing summer ball last year. Woodard said their quality of pitching really improved.

They are partnered with Driveline Baseball and use Rapsodo and Blast Baseball, and were the first program in Conference USA to install the TrackMan V3 unit and one of only about 25 teams in the country with the newer version. It gathers about a thousand data points per pitch and batted ball, and tracks the movement of the ball, allowing the coaching staff to learn from their pitchers’ pitches and hitters’ swings what they do well and what they need to work on.

One of the 49ers pitchers who has directly benefited? Bryce McGowan.

“Last year, his slider needed a lot of improvement,” Woodard said. “When he trained at Premier Pitching over the summer for 10 weeks, they worked on developing his slider. That slider has helped us win games and that slider is going to help him get drafted higher.”

Their vision for Charlotte baseball is to be at the forefront of player development in Division I.

“Our coaching staff has set out to create an environment that we feel rivals the big leagues,” Woodard said. “We want players that come to Charlotte to know they’re going to have the same training tools and methods that big-leaguers train with every day.”

Great players, great coaches

Woodard is enthusiastic about the group he’s working with to help coach this team, as well as empowering them to do their jobs.

“Great players make great coaches,” he said, “and Bo Robinson is one of the best hitting coaches in the country. Toby Bicknell is one of the best recruiting coordinators, as well as a great base running and outfield coach. Tyler Simmons is one of the best directors of player development I have been around, and Austin Meine is one of the brightest pitching minds.”

And then, there are the players, who have bought in to Woodard’s system. David McCabe leads the team with 12 home runs, falling just out of the top 50 nationally in that category even though he’s started just over half their games due to injuries.

Austin Knight is all over the leaderboard in Division 1. He’s leading the country in doubles, is in the top 10 in total bases and is among the RBI leaders while just nosing out LuJames Groover lll for the team lead in batting average.

“When you have players like Austin Knight who can go 12-12 in stolen bases, if he’s only going 2-2 on the year, you think of all those bases he’s not getting,” Woodard said.

“I think a really cool story is Nate Furman,” Woodard added. “He didn’t really play a whole lot until we got into conference play. The first five weeks of the season he barely played. We just kept on kind of watching him work and watching him practice and watching him train. We noticed he’s getting better and he’s getting stronger.”

Woodard has allowed himself to appreciate one of his favorite moments to date: the clincher against Rice.

“When I got to watch Austin Morozas throw a 94 mile-an-hour fastball to Aaron McKeithan to clinch the regular season Conference USA championship for the first time in our program’s history, it’s an amazing feeling.,” he said. “To see your guys celebrate those successes is why you coach.”

Now, though, the team’s focus is the next win. Middle Tennessee is the 49ers’ first opponent in the C-USA tournament.

“This time of the year, wins are hard to come by,” said Woodard, reinforcing a goal the team set at the very beginning of the season. “We want the city of Charlotte to watch us on TV in June.

“We don’t feel like we have played our best brand of baseball yet.”