Q&A with Rutgers Scarlet Knights baseball head coach Steve Owens

In late May, Rutgers Athletic Director Pat Hobbs announced that the baseball program will not be bringing back head coach Joe Litterio after six seasons in charge of the team.

A little less than a month later, Hobbs announced the hire of Steve Owens as the 13th head coach of the Rutgers baseball program. He joins the Scarlet Knights after nine years of coaching at Bryant University up in Rhode Island.

On Thursday, The Knight Report's Richie Schnyderite and Chris Nalwasky were able to sit down with Owens in a wide-ranging interview.

Career highlights for Owens per ScarletKnights.com

19th in Div. I winning % (.654).....71-48 postseason record.....28 consecutive winning seasons....20 30-win seasons.....5 40-win seasons.....20 regular season titles.....13 NCAA tournaments.....22 NCAA All-Americans.....11 conference coach of the year honors.....7 ABCA NCAA Regional Coach of the Year honors.....3 New England Coach of the Year honors.....49 Professional players

The Knight Report: What attracted you to Rutgers?

Steve Owens: “The opportunity to come into this program at this time - it feels like it’s a great time with being in the Big Ten - and with Rutgers building new facilities and making changes, it seems like it’s a special time for football, basketball, and wrestling, and we hope now baseball can be rekindled and have the opportunity to become relevant again. I was very impressed with the leadership here. It’s a perfect time to get in the mix at a big school in a big conference.”

TKR: What was your conversation with Pat Hobbs like during the interview process?

SO: “It was great. It was comfortable. It was easy. The interview process was one of the most comfortable that I’ve been through. I was able to be myself and explain how I’ve operated and how I’ve been able to be consistent and put a good product out year in and year out. There wasn’t any pretend or fake thing. It was this is where we’re at now and we’ve seen what you’ve done and we’re attracted to it and why do you want to be here and what are you going to do. I said well, ‘I’m just going to continue doing what I’ve been doing and with better facilities, a bigger and better school, and with more people in this area and this state, which is filled up with great baseball players, we’re hoping that’s a great formula to start building this program up again’.”

TKR: You’ve been here for almost exactly a month now, what’s it been like so far?

SO: “It’s been very, very busy. I’m trying to communicate with too many people everyday. Sometimes it feels like you’re just spinning your wheels. But, I didn’t come here for the short term. I’ve never taken a job to take another job. I realize that there are a lot of fences that we have to repair and we’re trying to get organized and structured. It’s excellent. We’re actually announcing a new volunteer assistant very soon. That’s another slam dunk. We’re trying to learn the current players, we’re trying to recruit players, and we’re trying to recruit the next class and the next class and so on. There’s a lot of stuff to do, but I’m trying to check them off one at a time and get organized, comfortable, and catch up, and then we can potentially get ahead.”

TKR: What’s your take on Gustavo Sosa, who was just drafted but chose to come to Rutgers and the rest of the 2019 recruiting class?

SO: “Great. We’re excited about the class coming in. I think they did a great job in recruiting that class. I’ve seen some of the position players and the pitchers while they were here for summer school and they’re very physical looking kids. We haven’t seen them all play obviously. Having an incoming player who was drafted is a feather in your cap. You’re excited about that type of athleticism and that potential. Just like we’re watching the returning players and they’re out in summer leagues doing a good job, we’re excited to get to work with those guys and know their strengths and weaknesses and watch them in the fall and get a good feel for what direction and strategy we want to bring into the spring on what team we’re going to be.”

TKR: You mentioned your staff before, how important was it bringing and hiring Brendan Monoghan and Kyle Pettoruto with you here from Bryant?

SO: “It was really important. Kyle’s been with me for six years and Brendan is going on four. The comfort level for which we operate and about how we go about our responsibilities, the recruiting evaluation and value, all of those things we’ve operated. It’s not like we have to teach someone a new strategy on how we want to teach our players too. There’s a comfort level with that and I’m excited they wanted to join me and they’re excited about this opportunity as well.”

TKR: Being from New York, do you think that helps on the recruiting trail in the area?

SO: “Yeah. I have a lot of different areas where I can get players from in addition to hopefully this area being our primary source. I have a lot of contacts in New York including upstate, Canada, and I’ve spent the last nine years of my life in New England there’s a lot of good players there too. We feel like we have a big basket where we can draw from and as we build our program, we hope we can get in the mix the absolute best players going forward.”

TKR: What’s your philosophy on recruiting? I know some prefer high school recruits or transfers once in awhile.

SO: “My philosophy in coaching is to be good every year and not try and make a quick fix and be good for one year. You build with younger players, freshmen and high school kids. It’s not say we won’t have transfers coming back. That’ll happen. Using the JUCO route could happen if the player is special and he fills a hole. But the philosophy will be based on a four-year player. We can have them in our program before it’s time to be impact guys. It’s easier to manage and it’s easier to grow and develop them and establish a relationship and trust with them when you have them for a couple years. We would also hope to lose them as juniors to professional baseball. That’s what you do with an elite program. Our goals are to win, develop professional players, and to compete in the conference and beyond in the postseason.”

TKR: When you’re building the team, what do you want it look like?

SO: “The team should be athletic. I would favor bigger players than smaller players. I’ve recruited a lot of projectable-type kids that don’t have a limit. They keep getting better, bigger, stronger, and faster. The kid that was throwing 85 is now throwing 93 and now getting drafted as a junior. It wasn’t all there in high school, but we saw it and we were right. That type of athleticism is what we’re looking for. I want toughness and kids that will bring it every day in practice that have good character and aren’t soft. They should enjoy practice, value winning, getting better and working on their own. That type of kid is who we gravitate to. We do our research. We don’t want selfish players even if they’re talented. We want hard-nosed kids that want to be here.”

TKR: When you first got here, what were your thoughts on the facilities?

SO: “We have some work to do. I’m excited that we’re going to replace our field turf. As soon as we’re done with another week of camp, they’re ripping that up and we’re changing the fencing structure, the padding, and the dimensions a little bit. It’s going to be a nice playing surface which will be a good place to say, ‘OK, there’s step one’. As you look around campus with the advent of the new practice arena, that’s going to be a beautiful building that gives basketball, gymnastics, and wrestling a high-level facility. I’ve seen the new football practice facility. That’s very nice. The changes that could happen (in the RAC), we’re happy we’re a part of the first step of doing some stuff for our program. I have a vision that goes beyond the field. We’re concerned right now that we get better as players and coaches and try to get things moving in the right direction. We want to relay the message how facility upgrades are important for the total growth of our program and most importantly, the recruiting process.”

TKR: Speaking of facilities, what do you think of the Fred Hill Training Complex?

SO: “That’s a really nice facility that gives us one of the very few schools in the country that have an indoor practice facility specially designed for baseball and softball. It’s a game changer. With us having poor weather for a big part of the season, we’re excited to have it so we can get better and prepare ourselves for early season games.”

It’s still pretty early, but has anyone on the team stood out to you so far?

SO: "I haven’t had them all in here yet and we’ve tried to reach out to as many players as we can. Harry Rutkowski has been very impressive to me, not only what is on the stat sheets, but from every time I’ve talked to somebody they’ve always said Harry is the hardest worker and Harry does this and Harry does that. I love that about him. He’s a Cape Cod League All-Star and he’s going to be a pro baseball player. That’s exciting that he is one of our best players and he is also a team leader both on and off the field.

Kevin Welsh is having a great summer too. He was just back recently doing some schoolwork this summer. He’s up in the New England Collegiate League and he was an All-Star too. Guys overall have done very well across the country in summer leagues.

Danny DiGeorgio is back healthy and playing. He’s a huge piece of the puzzle coming back to the program. Richie Schiekofer is also killing it in the Northwoods league. I played against him back when we played Maryland he’s in the top there or four in the league right now. There are some nice pieces to the puzzle and I don’t have all the answers yet, but we are excited about how some of these guys are doing."

TKR: How crazy is it to never have a losing season as a head coach before?

SO: "I never really thought about it that much because I try to just take it one game at a time and I try to win them. We value the Tuesday game just as much as we value a conference game or an NCAA tournament game or even a conference tournament game. If we treat them all with the same value and importance, than you just go about your work everyday. The hardest thing to do is when you develop a really good team and then all of a sudden you have four or five underclassmen drafted and you’re still able to win games next year, it’s a testament to the other players that you have in your program. You have to develop depth in order to do that and we are hoping to be able to develop front line dudes and have some depth, talent and youth being developed and ready to go when it is time."

TKR: Any type of goals for this upcoming season?

SO: "My immediate goal is to establish a good relationship with our current players, that’s our team and that’s who we have. That’s the first step in the process is to get those guys comfortable with us as coaches and that is how we are going to roll. The second step is to recruit the future and get a jump on some very highly talented kids. You can be a great coach, but the players are an important part of a program, not the coach. The coach sets the tone and has some impact, but you look like a really good coach when you have good players. Our players are the most important pieces of the puzzle. Getting to know these guys and recruiting the next class are the two priorities right now.

We have scheduling things to deal with, administrative things to learn and a lot of other moving pieces. We want to prove to our alumni base that we are committed to doing the right things and we need everyones help. You can’t change a program by yourself, it’s everyone — administration, players, alumni and boosters. We need all of those people together and to be committed.

I don’t care about individual things for me. I care about my team, my players, their performance and well being. Once they understand that we will get great effort from those guys and it will set the tone for the culture that we want to have. The goal is to change it quickly, but the right way with hard work and ethics. We will try to set the tone for that. I’m hoping by year three you will have a real good feel for what we are going to look like going forward."

TKR: What would you say to people who say “He’s won, but never at this level before?”

SO: I never had the chance too. I mean I haven’t done it at the Big Ten level because I was never a Big Ten coach. I’ve had 50 professional players and none of them were drafted out of high school, we helped to develop them all. Even though I’ve been at smaller schools, we’ve still beaten everyone. We play SEC teams every year and compete with them, we’ve been very consistent at playing at a high level. In 2016, we led the country in winning percentage. Last year we played a really hard schedule and won 12 of 14 weekends, that includes ACC,SEC and good Colonial teams on the road. I know this is a hard conference and if you .500 in the conference you’ll be playing in the postseason in the conference tournament and I think that is one of the first goals. We are not worried about peoples opinions, we are just going to put our head down and go to work.