The LeCroy era begins.


Liberty announced the replacement for Scott Jackson who departed after 8 season at the helm of Liberty Baseball.  Bradley LeCroy will head to Lynchburg as the 8th head coach of Liberty after a 2 year run as the Head Coach at VCU.  LeCroy took over late in the 2022 cycle after Shawn Stiffler left VCU for the Notre Dame job.  He was able to patch things together despite the roster getting gutted by the portal to finish 25-30 and #221 in the RPI in year 1.  The Rams took a big jump to 38-23 in year 2 while finishing 73rd in the RPI.  VCU won the A10 tournament to springboard the program into the Greenville regional where they won the 1st game against Wake Forest 1-0 before falling to Evansville and ECU.  He and his pitching coach Sean Thompson also worked with former Flame Christian Gordon who turned in a 3.62 ERA in 79 2/3 IP.  I'm not 100% sure but Gordon could have a COVID year left.  VCU also swept Liberty this year in their head to head matchups.  The Rams went 5-5 against P4 opponents this year as well.

LeCroy comes from the Jack Leggett Clemson tree where he played SS for the Tigers from 1997-2000.  He spent the bulk of his post playing career as an assistant at Clemson from 2003-2005 and then again from 2011-2022 before taking the VCU job.  He spent 2006-2010 at Western Carolina & Tennessee.   So far we've heard that Matt Williams will be sticking around on the staff as well as Daniel Brown in the same role.  His pitching coach at VCU was Sean Thompson but he had been there during the Shawn Stiffler era as well so it's unclear yet who will be the PC under LeCroy.  

The situation LeCroy inherits at Liberty is a bit like the situation at VCU in 2022 as Liberty has 18 players in the portal currently and has lost 1 of it's top HS commits at the moment.  I expect he will be able to get a few of them back in the next few days but the draft is also ongoing and a couple of signees could have signing decisions to make.  

The job itself drew very strong interest around the SE.  Former Georgia & Kent State Head Coach Scott Stricklin was reported to be interested as well as DBU top assistant Cliff Pennington, Clemson Assistant Nick Schnabel, Wake assistant Bill Cilento, Austin Peay HC Roland Fanning & VT assistant Kurt Elbin.  LeCroy was said by many sources to be Ian Mccaw's top target as he's been a successful head coach in the region with a program that hasn't had to completely rely on NIL to grow the program.  LeCroy will have plenty of work to do the next week.  

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