4-22-24 - Mo Egger with Jordan Bischel

41 games into their first season in the Big 12, UC's baseball team is 23-18 and 9-9 in conference play.

Head Coach Jordan Bischel joined us on ESPN1530.

Podcasts of The Mo Egger Radio Show are a service of Longnecks Sports Grill.

Listen to the show live weekday afternoons 3:00 - 6:00 on ESPN1530.

Listen Live: ESPN1530.com/listen

Follow on Twitter: @MoEgger

Email: [e-mail]

Get more: https://linktr.ee/MoEgger

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
It is twenty one minutes after fiveo'clock. This is ESPN fifteen thirty on
Mowegger. The University of Cincinnati baseballteam over the weekend took two out of
three from Houston. The Bearcats arenow even up in Big Twelve play at
nine and nine. They are twentythree and eighteen in their first season as
members of the Big Twelve, andin the first season under head coach Jordan

(00:23):
Bishell, who's kind enough on anoff day to give us a few minutes.
It's good to have you coach,especially in season. What's going on.
Nothing, we're getting spring on us. We're pretty deep into our season.
If it's been exciting first year inthe Big Twelve, I really appreciate
you having me on you. Wewere kind enough right before the season began.
You let me come up to youroffice and I did an interview with

(00:44):
you and we ran it here.And you know, it's before the season.
It's year one for you. Here, it's year one of the Big
Twelve. The unknowns outweighed the knowns. What have you come to know about
this club? Yeah? I meanI've been really really happy with how we've
improved throughout this these and our nonconference schedules certainly had some good opponents,
but we didn't have, you know, a really thick, deep schedule because

(01:07):
we knew a lot of change,a lot of adjustment, and we just
kind of maybe played okay sure thatthe first few weeks and jumping into Big
twelve play little unknown what to expectagain known it's a great league, And
what I've been really happy with ison a weekly basis, we've been really
competitive. We've probably won a numberof ball games. But more than anything,
again, I've just seen us improvea lot. We seem like so

(01:30):
much better baseball team than we werein the middle of February, and that's
exciting to see. Where where hasthat improvement come from. Where it stands
out the most, you know,I think it's our pitching has had some
nice jumps. We knew it wasreally really an experience there, and we're
starting to see the hands on experienceimprove. But I think more than anything,
it's it's just the style of baseball. Starting to really run the bases

(01:53):
the way we want to, haveconsistent hitting approaches the way we want to.
We really hadn't had any real comefrom behind victory. He's not really
trusting ourselves, and over the weekendwe were down for to nothing back to
back games and came back in oneand both. So not so much one
specific area, but more just kindof that culturally and stylistically, just just
the depth of the buy in andexcitement to do it has been fun to

(02:15):
see the And obviously you weren't here. The American Athletic Conference was a good
baseball league. How would you describethe leap though, from that level to
the level of play that you geton a consistent basis in the Big Twelve.
Yeah, and the American is it'sa very good lead. You're going
to have a couple of teams everyyear that are plenty good to play in

(02:38):
the NCAA tournament and really no badprograms. But what's been really interesting with
this league, and I think Houstonis a great example. Houston last year
finished second in the America and theywon every one of their conference series,
and now they're in last in theBig Twelve. And that's not an indictment
of Houston. When we played themthis weekend, it was a very talented

(02:58):
team that's just lost a lot ofgames. And the challenge is everybody is
good there's just you don't have aweekend where you say many they've got some
holes on the roster. Every teamis is a legitimately kind of a top
hundred program out of the three hundredin the country. And so there's just
there's no breaks, and that's that'sthe biggest thing. And then then the

(03:19):
top teams are they're legit top twentyfive programs, and so the depth of
the league is to me, what'sso impressive. There's just no breaks.
Jordan Bischell is with US, headcoach of the UC baseball team. The
Bearcats are on the road this weekendat UCF They will be home the first
weekend of May. They have atwo home series left. Obviously, the
weather is maybe this weekend, notwithstandingstarting to turn for the better, So

(03:39):
a good chance to go watch theBearcats on the third, fourth, and
fifth of May, and then lateron in the month of May as well.
Uh. I love following players fromCincinnati. Your program has a bunch
When I when I look at theteam and I look at the numbers,
the thing that stands out more tome than anything is you have a freshman,
Carson Carson from Moler High School wholeads your team in appearances, how

(04:02):
much trust? How hard is itto trust a freshman to pitching that many
games within such a tight amount oftime. Yeah, Carson has been really
impressive for us. He's a kidwho just had an okay fall for us.
We thought there was some upside hewas going to help us down the
road, but kind of lack ofexperience and depth and a couple of injuries

(04:23):
opened it to her for some opportunity. It turned out an opening day for
us. We were in a tiegame in the ninth inning and his number
got called. He gave up awalk off home run in his first career
appearance. But it's that experience thathe's learning from and what's been so impressive
with him. If you check thestats that he just does not walk anybody.
There's really no fear out there.He's throwing a ton of strikes attacking

(04:44):
hitters. And a lot of thoseappearances earlier were more non conference games,
maybe middle of the game. ButSaturday, he came out of the bullpen
and in a tie game and throughthree scoreless innings and gave us a win
out of the pen. When wecame back and rallied late and that for
a fresh who you know, probablytwo months ago thought oh i'll just get
a few ings midweek whatever. It'spretty cool to see him just continuing to

(05:05):
get better. Definitely a really coollocal story. I'm interested in your take
on this because at the highest levelsof the sport there's a lot of talk
of why we have so many arminjuries and the role of at the highest
level to pitch clock, and thenyou hear folks who say, look,
there's too much of an emphasis onvelocity. I'm curious from your standpoint where

(05:28):
you're recruiting high school kids and you'recoaching college kids at the amateur level,
what do you say to those whosay there's too much of a focus on
velocity. I think they're probably right. Obviously, velocity matters. It's harder
to hit ninety five than it isninety, and it's harder to hit ninety
than there is eighty five. Andit is crazy the velocity we are now

(05:48):
seeing. I mean, we musthave seen seven different pitchers over the weekend
that got it up to ninety fourninety five. And as a team that's
struggling in our league, like it'sone week after the next, but we're
also seeing a lot of opponents wherethey have two or three really quality arms
on the shelf, and I'm notcriticizing what they're doing or how they're developing.

(06:09):
I think a lot of these thingsare probably started before we get our
hands on them. But we reallytry to develop our velocity kount of organically,
not spending a lot of time withthe radar gun, but just talking
about quality throwing progressions and quality awayfrom time and eating the right things and
developing your body and hoping the jumpscome that way, because there's nothing that

(06:29):
can really cripple your season more thanunavailable pitchers. But you know, I
think you're seeing less and less guysI really know how to pitch. And
Carson is a guy that we justtalked about that's kind of the opposite.
Now he's ninety one ninety two,that's pretty good on for a freshman,
but he commands the baseball and Ithink that's that's kind of our path as
a program is let's find guys thatmay not jump off the page in terms

(06:51):
of stuff, but can really pitch. But certainly it is a little bit
scary the number of pitchers that aregoing under the knife and definitely something we
got to look to to correct alittle bit. You hear that term all
the time, learning how to pitchfor a dumb guy like me. Walk
me through that process. What doesthat look like? I've been trying to
figure that out for some years.Not too so, don't feel like I

(07:13):
mean to me, it's how doyou throw with a high level of intent,
but really still worry about how Icommand the baseball and how do I
treat you know, a two runlead with nobody on base, or a
tie game in the ninth with thebases loaded. Being able to breathe and
have a good mentality where you havethe same effort level and not trying to
do too much when you have success, not losing focus and overthrow. I

(07:35):
mean, there's so many layers tothat. Obviously being able to mix different
pitches, pitch to both sides ofthe plate, but so much of pitching
is between the years. Like ifyou think about trying to throw a baseball
into you know, a four inchby four inch square six inch by six
inch square, which is what itrequires to be successful at this level,
and to do that with super highintent really difficult. So if your head's

(07:58):
off by even a little bit right. The ball is not going to come
out the same every time, andso trying to get guys to really have
that mental process of blow the gamedown and just execute the pitch, worry
about where you're throwing it, notwhat the result was. The umpire's call,
was the ball hit hard? Didwe make an air? Or how's
the crowd here? And you nameit? I mean, that's the big
challenge is how do you slow allthat down? It sounds really easy,

(08:20):
but obviously it's not. No,no, Well, put Jordan Vishion with
us. The baseball coach at theUniversity of Cincinnati. The Bearcats off until
a weekend series at UCF. Itstarts on Friday. This this is also
probably a dumb question, but whenyou have a slew of off days in
season, what you're obviously working out, but do you scrimmage? What are

(08:41):
those those quote off days looking like? Yeah, and a typical week for
us, we'll play Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then play one, if
not two games during the week.You know, we always give our guys
one day off per week, andthen that was today, and so usually
we only have a couple of practicedays. But this weeks unique, so
it's actually our finals week, soreally light and the load, let them
get on top of the classroom stuff. And then when it comes to kind

(09:05):
of Tuesday Wednesday, we'll we probablywon't do much inner squad because we're forty
plus games into the season and gettingthem off their feet a little might be
might be valuable, but it'll bea good chance for us. You know,
for example, ucfs a program thatbunts a lot. Let's make sure
our bunt defenses are in place.Let's make sure we do some stuff with
the pitchers in the infielders. Somaybe finding that opportunity to do a few
other things that we did a lotof in January and February, but we

(09:28):
haven't been able to hit on asmuch lately. You see baseball team twenty
three and eighteen nine to nine ina very crowded Big twelve. They're on
the road this weekend, back athome next weekend, the third, fourth,
and fifth West Virginia will be intown. They have two home series
remaining. There's also a week weekdaymorning game against yukon Education Day at UC

(09:52):
Baseball Stadium. It's been fun tofollow your program's paths. Hopefully we can
do it again, coach, thanksso much. Yeah, no, I
appreciate you having me on MO.I know there's a million things to do
in Cincinnati. It's been an awesomeplace to move to. But I would
really encourage folks to get out andsee us these opponents we have coming up,
our high, high level teams thatare going to be playing in the
NCAA Tournament. It should be reallyexciting baseball at UC the next month.

(10:13):
I would second those thoughts. Thankyou so much, coach. I appreciate
it. Have a good day anytime. Jordan Bishell, baseball coach at the
University of Cincinnati, Tarren, didI say something we suddenly we have a
lot of folks on hold, DidI make a mistake. No, people
just want to talk about Elli.Okay, well we'll do that next on
ESPN fifteen thirty