It appears Arizona baseball coach Jay Johnson is off to Baton Rouge, as it was reportedly announced by D1 Baseball’s Kendall Rogers that the Wildcat skipper is set to take over at LSU.
Johnson would replace longtime Tigers manager Paul Mainieri, who announced his retirement earlier this season. Johnson, who is 44-years-old, took Arizona to to the College World Series twice during his time in Tucson. He finishes with a 208-114 overall record.
In Johnson’s first year in 2016, he took the program to Omaha, where they were just a game away from becoming national champions. Arizona fell to Coastal Carolina in three games. This past season in 2021, the Wildcats also were Pac-12 Champions. They went 45-18 and made another trip to Omaha.
With the baseball coaching vacancy opening up, Arizona will now have a new baseball, football, basketball, and soccer coach going into next year’s athletic season.
As for future coaching options, there are many available throughout college baseball, including in the Wildcats own dugout. Arizona associate head coach Nate Yeskie coached for 11 seasons at Oregon State before coming to Tucson in 2020. He’s helped the pitching staff, and obviously has familiarity with every player currently in the program.
What Andy Stankiewicz has done at GCU and during his baseball career has been impressive, and he’s another name that comes to mind, as well as quality coaches out of the Big West such as UC Santa Barbara’s Andrew Checketts and UC Irvine’s Ben Orloff.
Jedd Fisch, Tommy Lloyd, and now there will be another new coach at an athletic program in Tucson.
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