Questions abound for Coastal Carolina baseball in '12

Coastal Carolina baseball coach Gary Gilmore was at a showcase event in Columbia this week as he, Liberty coach Jim Toman and South Carolina assistant Chad Holbrook discussed the draft and the challenge of getting recruits to choose college over jumping into their professional careers.

"We were just kind of chatting a little bit, and Jimmy ... was asking me how we were dealing with it, and I just laughed - 'We've never dealt with it,'" Gilmore said. "He told me, 'When I was at South Carolina, if a guy wasn't a top-two or three-round guy it wasn't even a thought that guy was going to go professional. ... We hardly ever lost anyone. Now at Liberty, we lose every one of them. I have a guy go in the 40th round and think[s] he was a fourth rounder.' ... Coach Holbrook was nodding the whole time. It is what it is."

And so now Gilmore and the Chanticleers play the waiting game after seeing five of their incoming recruits taken in Major League Baseball's first-year player draft earlier this week.

That - coupled with the current Chants expected to leave after being drafted as well as the other senior departures - puts the team's 2012 roster in a rather tenuous state at this point.

"I think we've done a great job with these kids. I feel very good about it," Gilmore said of the incoming class. "Will I go to sleep at night the next two months and sleep completely at ease? Absolutely not. I won't have a great night's sleep again until they're in class in the fall. ... This is a difference-maker recruiting class."

And the Chants will need that infusion of young talent.

Coastal likely will return only four players from the team's end-of-season starting lineup as first baseman Rich Witten, right fielder Daniel Bowman (drafted but expected to return) and catcher Tucker Frawley are likely to be the lineup's lone proven veterans next year.

In addition to those seniors-to-be, rising sophomores Tripp Martin (third base), Jacob May (left field) and John Fidanza (backup catcher) are the only other position players with significant experience coming back.

Meanwhile, starting pitcher Josh Conway, reliever/starter Jordan Coons and bullpen assets Ryan Connolly and Aaron Burke will return to prominent roles on the pitching staff, while rising sophomores Tyler Herb and Stefan del Pino will be counted on to emerge as more consistent contributors.

That leaves plenty of opportunity for the roster's other young players and incoming freshmen - and therefore a lot of uncertainty.

"People don't believe me, but outside of about three or four guys, it's going to be a glorified junior college team," Gilmore said somewhat lightheartedly. "There's going to be a ton of freshmen, there's going to be some JuCo guys come in. At least of the 27 guys on scholarship and this or that, you're going to probably have 15-18 of them be freshmen, but that's fine.

"There comes a point in time where you can't continuously give up all your good juniors and lose significant incoming people and not have it impact you some."

Among those incoming freshmen, pitcher Jordan Cote (drafted in the third round), outfielder Joe Tuschak (sixth round), and pitchers Tyler Poole (38th round), Javier Reynoso (39th round) and Joe Perricone (40th round) all have decisions to make.

Gilmore thinks it's probably a long shot now that either Cote or Tuschak will make it to Conway, but he's hoping the others decide to follow through with their college careers.

"They're all great players. There's three pitchers there in the late 30s or early 40s that can live out the dream that Anthony Meo did. That's what I'm hoping," Gilmore said, highlighting Meo's development into a second-round draft pick this year. "... If we're ever going to get to Omaha, that's where it's got to start."

That quest for Omaha and the College World Series remains ongoing for the program after the Chants (42-20) were eliminated in the NCAA regionals this season.

And though Gilmore had his share of frustrations along the way with this group, he had some perspective Thursday as he looked back on a season that brought the Chants' fifth-straight Big South championship and 10th NCAA tournament appearance in the last 11 seasons.

"The piece that a lot of people don't understand is how good these kids did play at times and how good this team is," he said. "The standard here is so high. Going 42-20, I mean, there's a lot of people that look around town and around this campus and go 'What's wrong with the baseball team?' I mean heck, we were ranked in the top 25 about two-thirds of the year, we win our league, we go to a regional ...

"When you look back at it, it was lot better than any of us want to admit."

As for next year, well, the decisions of some of these drafted recruits and the progression of the program's young players as a whole will determine where the program goes from here.

"We'll have growing pains now and then, I'm sure we will, but that will be fun and we'll be better for it in the long run," Gilmore said. "... We're going to need Bowman and Witten and Tucker Frawley and some of these guys that are coming back to be cornerstones of our program next year. They're going to have to be the guys that show them how we do it."

Notes

Gilmore said veteran left-hander Keith Hessler will be signing a free agent contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks after going undrafted as a redshirt-junior. Hessler was chosen in the 28th round last year by the Diamondbacks and chose to return to Coastal, but he will forgo his senior season. ... Gilmore is hopeful undrafted senior pitchers Matt Rein - the Big South pitcher of the year - and Jim Birmingham will land free agent contracts as well. ... Reynoso told the Tampa Tribune after the draft that he is still planning to come to Coastal.