Months removed from his midseason start, Rice baseball head coach David Pierce will finally get his first chance to step back and assess his new program.

For better or worse, Rice baseball head coach David Pierce has just endured the most chaotic months of his coaching career. When the spring began, he was an assistant at Texas State. A few short months later he was at the helm of a program someone else had built and which was careening toward a lost season.

That Pierce was able to right the ship and get this team to the postseason was remarkable in itself. That the Owls were sent home winless from the AAC Tournament further demonstrates how much more work still needs to be done.

Pierce began his closing remarks in Clearwater on Wednesday following the Owls’ elimination at the hands of Florida Atlantic with a sense or earned pride. “At the end of the day, I feel like this program’s gotten better he said,” adding later that he was “really proud of our team.”

In the same breath, the list of to-do’s was already on the top of his mind.

More: 59 Minutes — David Pierce Challenges Rice baseball to grow

“There’s just so many things that we just gotta address,” he said, looking ahead to what promises to be a crucial offseason, his first with the program as its head coach.

“We’ve got to address the structure of how we run some things within the program. We’ve got to address just our team itself, keep building our culture, understanding the standard. And then we got to look at a lot of options with the portal, potentially, because it’s available. And then we gotta get on the recruiting trail , start camps, recruit, the thing that happens at this time of the year.”

The list goes on and on. There’s so much to do.

But as Pierce embarks on that list, it’s worth reflecting on the work already done.

Rice had a .190 winning percentage before Pierce arrived this season. Pierce finished with a .361 winning percentage and went .500 across his last 20 games, which included four losses to top-seeded UTSA in the span of six days.

Pierce rediscovered the vintage form of Davion Hickson that had gone dormant through the first three months of the year. He salvaged cast-off bullpen piece Jack Ben-Shoshan and turned him into the most reliable reliever on the team. On the shoulders (and bats) of five freshmen, Pierce discovered a viable offensive identity. He got this team to believe again.

More: Jack Ben-Shoshan’s circuitous path to the top of the Rice Baseball bullpen

That belief is what Pierce and the Rice administration was banking on when they made the perhaps unprecedented decision to implement a midseason hiring, a shotgun wedding on the diamond which all parties hoped would produce a lasting romance between this once great program and a coach who remembers those glories days and who yearns to bring them back.

But at that podium in Clearwater, Pierce wasn’t thinking about those aspirations, not yet.

“This is my least favorite time of the year,” he admitted. “The first three weeks of transition from the end of the season, moving into the off season, it’s really kind of a tough transition. It is because you just put so much into it, you’re drained. You’re always working off adrenaline, and then you gotta switch gears.”

The man who just poured his heart and soul into a team assembled by someone else is finally going to sit down and put his own stamp on things. He mentioned changes to baserunning, defense, their approach at the plate, the short game and the program’s pitching philosophy. All things better suited to groom in the fall, not in the middle of a season.

Yes, for Rice baseball and David Pierce, the offseason has arrived. The first wave of chaos has subsided, and the next storm is brewing on deck. He and everyone invested in this program are banking on smoother waters next spring and a new, better tomorrow for a program that’s been long searching for that brighter tomorrow and believes it finally has the right captain to get it there.

** Photo credit: Maria Lysaker **

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