SxSE: Coach Tim Corbin's Vanderbilt Commodores

♦ Recruiting footprint:  Looking at the recent rosters, Kentucky tends to recruit their players from Tennessee, Massachusetts, Texas, Indiana, New Jersey, plus random players from LA, FL, PA, NC, IA, NY, AZ and MO.

♦ The Tim Corbin Pyramid of Greatness (anchorofgold.com)

♦ Vanderbilt skipper guided Commodores to College World Series with mentor's help (NashvilleCityPaper.com)

Ten years ago, however, Corbin didn’t see himself at Vanderbilt. He didn’t want to leave Clemson, where he was an assistant coach for nine years under Jack Leggett, arguably his strongest coaching influence.

“When I was there, I seriously didn’t think I was ever going to leave, to be honest with you,” Corbin said. “Being a head coach was not on my bucket list. … I was having so much fun. I enjoyed [Leggett] a great deal. We were very successful. We were working with good players. We had been to Omaha four times. He just created a very fun culture that made coaching and teaching a lifestyle.”
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♦ The Immediate Progression: Leadership (whenitstrikesme.com)

After taking over a long-suffering Commodore program in 2003, Coach Corbin has turned Vanderbilt into a national power. The team is well on its way to a 6th consecutive NCAA appearance and its 7th in his 9 years at the helm. In the process, he’s earned a reputation as one of the top program builders and recruiters in the nation. But he’s very much more than that. He’s an individual who builds around an exciting, high-energy environment driven by a disciplined approach that is anything but punitive. Commodore players work hard, do right and have each others’ backs not because of a stern hand, but because of a strong desire to run through walls for the man at the helm and for those around them. In other words, Coach Corbin has been everything Vandy hopes to have found in new Football coach James Franklin.
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Coach Corbin has also adjusted his style of coaching with an acute awareness of how his team matches up on the roster card. While pitching has been a hallmark of all Corbin teams, that is largely due to the recruiting of Bakich and current recruiting coordinator Josh Holliday (with hefty input and participation from Corbin and Johnson) and DJ’s outstanding tutelage of pitchers. Similarly, Corbin teams feature defensive excellence that is part recruiting and part teaching, but he’s been willing to adjust his style of play offensively to match talents. This year, we’ve seen perhaps the most dramatic change with a move toward more small ball. While it’s no secret that I think we bunt way too much, I entirely acknowledge that that strategy is a reaction to the BBCOR era of the dead bat. While I still believe we would be more efficient offensively if we bunted far less, one cannot argue with the overall results of being aggressive on the base paths, hitting-and-running and, yes, even bunting in obtaining a 30-3 record and a 10-2 start in league play.

♦ My Q & A with Vanderbilt's Tim Corbin (collegebaseballtoday.com)

• Recruiting philosophy: I like athletes. I like baseball players, but I also like football players, I like hockey players. I don’t mind somebody who just plays baseball, but if I had my druthers, I’d get a guy who has played several sports, because they’ve practiced at being an athlete.
  
• SEC Baseball:  It’s almost like major league baseball where everyone is so good in this conference, I just don’t think it matters. No matter how good your pitching is, no matter how good your hitting is, I just think someone’s gonna be better on a particular weekend and everyone’s gonna be close to .500, maybe a little bit above it, maybe a little bit below it. Those teams that used to stretch out to big leads in the standings like 10 or 15 years ago, those days are done.