Who could be Mississippi State Baseball's 'splash' hire?

In less than a week, a general sense of the type of coach to replace Chris Lemonis is already starting to emerge.

Baseball America’s Jacob Rudner and Peter Flaherty on the Baseball America College Podcast may have put it in the simplest terms when they talked about the situation.

“I have a feeling they’ll go after a big name and make as big a splash as possible,” Flaherty said in the first segment of the episode. He also added it wasn’t likely the Bulldogs would hire an assistant coach and it “is likely to be someone from the SEC or ACC ranks.”

Rudner at one point talked about his list of Mississippi State coaching candidates (that requires a subscription to read) and said it includes “established coaches, some of whom have been to Omaha with their program in the last five years.”

That’s the general feeling about what Mississippi State will do: make a big splash hire. So, who would be a splash hire? And what even is a splash hire?

What is a splash hire?

To answer the second question, just look at what Texas did last offseason. The Longhorns fired their coach and hired Texas A&M’s Jim Schlossnagle, who had just lost in the College World Series final to Tennessee.

That’s about as big of a splash as you’ll see in college baseball.

Who would be a splash hire?

To answer the first question, the biggest splash would come from hiring a current SEC head coach. Mississippi State hiring Ole Miss’s head coach would rival the splash the Longhorns made, but Schlossnagle was at Texas A&M for three seasons and Mike Bianco’s been at Ole Miss for 25 years.

That leaves 14 other SEC head coaches. But, realistically, the head coaches at Texas, Arkansas, Vanderbilt, Florida, LSU, Tennessee and, probably, Texas A&M (but it would be funny if the Aggies had their head coach hired away by another SEC team again) aren’t going to leave their current posts. We can also take the coaches at South Carolina and Missouri off this list, based on their team’s performances this season.

That leaves us with the following list with their career head coach records in parenthesis:

• Rob Vaugh, Alabama (250-159)
• Wes Johnson, Georgia (68-19)
• Butch Thompson, Auburn (310-224-1)
• Skip Johnson, Oklahoma (259-164)
• Nick Mingione, Kentucky (287-181)

Thompson and Skip Johnson have led their teams to the College World Series at least once in the last four seasons, which would be a good-sized splash. But who wouldn’t love to see Wes Johnson turn Dudy Noble Field into the home of the nation’s best home run hitting team instead of wherever the other SEC Bulldog team plays. If having a strong connection with Mississippi State is a requirement, Mingione spent eight seasons as an assistant coach in Starkville.

And it’s always fun to take something nice away from Alabama, isn’t it?

Could a splash hire come from outside the SEC?

Outside of the SEC, there are some big names that would make a splash. I’ve seen Dallas Baptist’s Dan Heefner, Kansas’s Dan Fitzgerald and Duke’s Chris Pollard on more than one “hot board” list.

But if the goal is to make a splash that rivals the one Texas made a year ago, there’s a great option outside the SEC. It also goes past the line of what’s actually realistic, but let’s have some fun and spend some time in make-believe-land.

Looking at the list of non-SEC teams to play in the last four Men’s College World Series there are three teams that have played in two or more: NC State, Stanford and Virginia.

How about Mississippi State hiring Brian O’Connor, who has led Virginia to Omaha (his birthplace, by the way) in three of the last four seasons (seven total, won in 2015)? He’s been at Virginia since 2004 and has a career 885-370-2 career record, and he’s also younger than Stanford’s David Esquer and NC State’s Elliot Avent.