February 19, 2025 • 10 mins
The UC baseball team is nationally-ranked for the first time in program history. Jordan Bischel is the Head Coach of the Bearcats, and he joined us on ESPN1530.
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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
Get more: https://linktr.ee/MoEgger
Follow on X: @MoEgger
Instagram too: @MoEgger
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Twenty two after three. This is ESPN fifteen thirty. My
(00:03):
name is Mulleger. Thank you so much for listening today.
Anything you might have missed or may miss on this
show you can listen to on the iHeartRadio app. He's
living our chat yesterday with Pat Noonan, the head coach
of FC Cincinnati who plays tonight the Kunka CAF Champions
Cup podcast of the show, a service of Long Neck
Sports Girl. Speaking of head coaches, Jordan Bishell is the
(00:25):
head baseball coach at the University of Cincinnati. The Bearcats
opened the season at Duke this weekend and won two
out of three, and they did so by stealing bases
and getting hit by pitches and walking and forcing the
issue and playing small ball, and as a result, two
wins in three games and the program's first ever national ranking,
(00:48):
which is pretty cool, Jordan Bischell joins us. I know
it's one series at the beginning of the season. It
is a tiny, tiny, tiny part of your schedule. The
idea isn't well be ranked and we're good here. At
the same time, it's got to be pretty cool for
you and your guys to look at the national rankings
and there Cincinnati.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, for sure. I mean we I think we have
enough older guys that they understand it. It doesn't really
carry any weight. But we also know that kind of
when we embarked in this conference and our staff on
this job a year and a half ago, that kind
of an afterthought to think we'd be in any sort
of national ranking within a year or two. So great
(01:29):
validation for our guys to see that the work they're
putting in is paying off in the buy and they've
showed us paying off. And now we also understand if
we go out and play a four weekend you can
kiss all that stuff good bye pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
You take two out of three against a really good
team on the road. A lot of good stuff happened
at the top of the list of things you're pleased
about in regards to how your team played against Duke's
what's at the very top of it.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
You know, we talk a lot to our guys about
you're not going to be great at everything, but we
want to be great at the things that we emphasize,
the things that were really hearing our hats on, and
certainly one of those things is our ability to pressure
you with the short game and We talked about some
of that hit by pitch stuff last time. I mean
we got hit by eight pitches, we bunted for I
think seven hits, we stole ten bases, took a bunch
(02:17):
of walks. That looks like just the easy, little short
game stuff, but it takes a heck of a lot
of time and prep work. So to see that payoff
was big. We spent a lot of time with our
pitchers on mentality and toughness, and even though we probably
walked too many guys, we served up a lot of
home runs. Ultimately, for the most part, avoid at the beginning.
And that's again sudden. We preach a lot.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
We've talked about the short game and stealing bases and
drawing walks and working counts. Is it's such a valuable
skill set at any level of baseball. Kind of walk
me through the process of teaching a young hitter how
to go about working account working a picture so that
he can draw a bunch of walks.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, it's an interesting process because you don't land here
by being a high school hitter that stands up there
trying to walk right. You could hit. Your coaches in
high school probably are telling you you should never take
a strike in anything you can, because they're talented guys,
and so getting that buy in takes a little bit
of time, and it really starts with preaching to these guys.
(03:20):
We're not trying to take the bat out of our hands.
We're trying to create them getting good pitches to hit.
You know, if ultimately they show tremendous discipline, it forces
the pitcher to give in to them. And hitting is
a lot more fun when you're getting pitches down the
heart of the plate, and we saw that at times
this week. And when you force them over the heart
of the plate, it's gonna be a lot easier to
(03:40):
put a barrel on a baseball. And so it's we
want our guys to think aggressively, but just discipline.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
You mentioned the base stealing ten over the weekend. You're
year one. You guys were second in the Big twelve
and stolen bases. This is something you have emphasized. Do
your guys have the green light? Do you have certain
guys who if they get the first they can do
other guys need the signal from the dugout. How does
that work?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah, we you know, we have way improved communication from
years ago. Where they all have you know, an electronic
watch type device on their risks that we can put
in different signals and a series of things. So it's
rarely just the blanket green light, but there's a lot
of situations where we where we will green light them
(04:24):
for you know, extended amount of pitches and things like that,
so nobody's got it just start to finish throughout the game,
but we we put those on a lot. Ultimately, if
you only if you're going to be a great base
stealing team, you can't tell a guy which pitch to
go on. You have to have jumps, you have to
have the right foot work, and so you have to
give these guys a lot of Flexibility's what's tricky with
(04:45):
that is we take a lot of pride in not
getting thrown out. We don't want to just go to go.
We want to be close to ninety percent, which is
really really hard to do, and that's where the work
comes in. For us to trust these guys to go
and still trust they are going to make it ninety
percent of the time takes a lot lot of work
on their part and a lot of discipline, and they've
really brought into it so far.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah, I would imagine then, you know, I say this
as somebody who never had the green light if I
got down there, there's at the lower levels. You know,
you're fast, you can get a jump, you go. Maybe
you're not reading a picture, maybe there's not as much
into it. Walk me through the process of teaching a
guy how to be more than just a fast based
runner and instead a good base dealer.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, we you know your your full work is huge.
You can't have any false steps, any loss steps. We
spend a ton of time watching video of picture tendencies,
little tips that we think will tell us when we
think the ball is going to be delivered, understanding of
when they like to pick off, and then there's a
lot of full work involved with kind of gaining some ground. Basically,
(05:45):
if if you run from a stand still, it's pretty
hard to steal on a lot of pictures, and so
we do what we call different vaulting techniques where you're
kind of getting a little head start with a little jump,
but you have to have enough balance where if they
pick off, you can get back. And it's it's pretty
advanced stuff and you don't see it Panada, which makes
it hard to defend it's it's not a lot of
teams that do it, so it's tough to prepare for.
(06:06):
But what people don't see is we really have our
better base runners probably three times a week starting in August,
are doing some of this technique stuff, and so it
takes a lot of time.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Jordan Bischel is with us. The Bearcats off to a
terrific start. Took two out of three against Duke over
the weekend. They're off to Vegas for four against UNLV
than four against UC San Diego. Obviously, it sort of
depends on the part of the country you're in, and
you've spent your career in the northern part of the
United States. Walk me through the process of assembling a
(06:38):
college baseball schedule in a cold weather city.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah, well we failed this week. We scheduled a home
game for February eighteen, so we see how that panned out.
But actually we didn't even have that one planned. We
had a cancelation, so we had to try to get something.
And but you know, I'm pretty involved in the scheduling.
You know, we played ten league weekends, so obviously that's
set up for us. My goal early is to not
(07:04):
be crazy running back and forth, and so if you
look at this coming week, we go out to UNLV
and we stay out there and play at at U
See San Diego. That sounds really terrible for most people
listening right now. I'm sure we'll have to suffer through
that seventy five and sunny every day. But what I found,
and being up north even further, we've had years where
we've played twenty or twenty five games before we had
(07:26):
a home game. It's a back and forth that really
can wear these guys out. We got home about four
thirty in the morning on Sunday night, which means your
Monday is pretty shot, and before you know it, you're
back on the road Thursday, which you can do here
and there, but if you do that three, four or
five straight weeks, it takes a toll. So we try
to be strategic with when we travel, maybe staying on
the road a little bit longer. You'll see with our
(07:46):
midweek games, we try to play a lot either at
home or fairly local out of Miami, Ohio, out of Davier. Again,
the big twelves all over the country, so we have
to be a little strategic that if they're spending all
their time on buses and airplanes. It's it takes out
of our practice time, it takes out of our rest time,
it takes out of their school time, and so it
does take quite a bit of work to figure out
how to best schedule those those twenty six non conference games.
(08:10):
And you got a factor and strength to schedule too, right,
Who you play does matter a little bit when your
league has several several that large bits every year.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
What are the logistics that might might not be aware
of when you take a college baseball team on the
road for over a week.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Oh my yeah, the planning for the food, the ability
of me to not eat what the players are eating.
The biggest staff they get said like high level college athletes,
and then I eat what they eat, but eat the
ice cream afterwards too. So that's a problem, but it is.
It's amazing the team of people that goes with us.
We've got some of that coordinates, all our video, got
some of the coordinates all our travel. We've got our
(08:47):
strengths coach, our athletic trainer, our social media team will
send somebody on top of roster obviously, and so it
we've got such great staff. We've got such such great
people at Cincinnati. And that's not just baseball people, equipment
people and athletic training, and I mean, it makes my
job a lot easier, but it is. We traveled. We
(09:07):
had a group of fifty travel to Duke over the weekend,
and that you know, I included thirty four players, but
then you got sixteen other bodies trying to help these
guys out.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Off to Vegas, then La Jolla and then hopefully the
weather turns for the better and you get blessed with
good conditions when you come home to take on Toledo
on the fifth, and the home slate will start then
and hopefully you guys are still ranked. Certainly rooting for that.
I appreciate the time as always, coach, many thanks, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
We've got two weeks for everybody to buy their tickets
get out there. I can't promise wins, but I can
promise you come out you'll see fast, exciting baseball.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, I would concur with that. That's Jordan Bissel, the
baseball coach. That you see Bearcat's ranked in the top
twenty five D one baseball for the first time in
program history. It is twenty eight away from four o'clock
Sports headlines coming up on ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Station Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Traffic from the UC Health Traffic Center. At uce Health,
you'll find comprehensive care that's so personal it makes your
best tomorrow possible. That's boundless care for better outcomes. Expect
more at UCHealth dot com. Eastbound Ronald Reagan Highway. That
earlier accident now cleared away. Approaching Plainfield Road. Still going
to find a seven minute delay though. Back from Ridge
(10:29):
Road southbound Reading Road, it's an accident at Liberty Street
in eastbound Signs Road. An overturned vehicle at the Route
four bypass. I'm at ezelic with traffic.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
This report is sponsored by Rapid Radio.
Twenty two after three. This is ESPN fifteen thirty. My
(00:03):
name is Mulleger. Thank you so much for listening today.
Anything you might have missed or may miss on this
show you can listen to on the iHeartRadio app. He's
living our chat yesterday with Pat Noonan, the head coach
of FC Cincinnati who plays tonight the Kunka CAF Champions
Cup podcast of the show, a service of Long Neck
Sports Girl. Speaking of head coaches, Jordan Bishell is the
(00:25):
head baseball coach at the University of Cincinnati. The Bearcats
opened the season at Duke this weekend and won two
out of three, and they did so by stealing bases
and getting hit by pitches and walking and forcing the
issue and playing small ball, and as a result, two
wins in three games and the program's first ever national ranking,
(00:48):
which is pretty cool, Jordan Bischell joins us. I know
it's one series at the beginning of the season. It
is a tiny, tiny, tiny part of your schedule. The
idea isn't well be ranked and we're good here. At
the same time, it's got to be pretty cool for
you and your guys to look at the national rankings
and there Cincinnati.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, for sure. I mean we I think we have
enough older guys that they understand it. It doesn't really
carry any weight. But we also know that kind of
when we embarked in this conference and our staff on
this job a year and a half ago, that kind
of an afterthought to think we'd be in any sort
of national ranking within a year or two. So great
(01:29):
validation for our guys to see that the work they're
putting in is paying off in the buy and they've
showed us paying off. And now we also understand if
we go out and play a four weekend you can
kiss all that stuff good bye pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
You take two out of three against a really good
team on the road. A lot of good stuff happened
at the top of the list of things you're pleased
about in regards to how your team played against Duke's
what's at the very top of it.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
You know, we talk a lot to our guys about
you're not going to be great at everything, but we
want to be great at the things that we emphasize,
the things that were really hearing our hats on, and
certainly one of those things is our ability to pressure
you with the short game and We talked about some
of that hit by pitch stuff last time. I mean
we got hit by eight pitches, we bunted for I
think seven hits, we stole ten bases, took a bunch
(02:17):
of walks. That looks like just the easy, little short
game stuff, but it takes a heck of a lot
of time and prep work. So to see that payoff
was big. We spent a lot of time with our
pitchers on mentality and toughness, and even though we probably
walked too many guys, we served up a lot of
home runs. Ultimately, for the most part, avoid at the beginning.
And that's again sudden. We preach a lot.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
We've talked about the short game and stealing bases and
drawing walks and working counts. Is it's such a valuable
skill set at any level of baseball. Kind of walk
me through the process of teaching a young hitter how
to go about working account working a picture so that
he can draw a bunch of walks.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, it's an interesting process because you don't land here
by being a high school hitter that stands up there
trying to walk right. You could hit. Your coaches in
high school probably are telling you you should never take
a strike in anything you can, because they're talented guys,
and so getting that buy in takes a little bit
of time, and it really starts with preaching to these guys.
(03:20):
We're not trying to take the bat out of our hands.
We're trying to create them getting good pitches to hit.
You know, if ultimately they show tremendous discipline, it forces
the pitcher to give in to them. And hitting is
a lot more fun when you're getting pitches down the
heart of the plate, and we saw that at times
this week. And when you force them over the heart
of the plate, it's gonna be a lot easier to
(03:40):
put a barrel on a baseball. And so it's we
want our guys to think aggressively, but just discipline.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
You mentioned the base stealing ten over the weekend. You're
year one. You guys were second in the Big twelve
and stolen bases. This is something you have emphasized. Do
your guys have the green light? Do you have certain
guys who if they get the first they can do
other guys need the signal from the dugout. How does
that work?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah, we you know, we have way improved communication from
years ago. Where they all have you know, an electronic
watch type device on their risks that we can put
in different signals and a series of things. So it's
rarely just the blanket green light, but there's a lot
of situations where we where we will green light them
(04:24):
for you know, extended amount of pitches and things like that,
so nobody's got it just start to finish throughout the game,
but we we put those on a lot. Ultimately, if
you only if you're going to be a great base
stealing team, you can't tell a guy which pitch to
go on. You have to have jumps, you have to
have the right foot work, and so you have to
give these guys a lot of Flexibility's what's tricky with
(04:45):
that is we take a lot of pride in not
getting thrown out. We don't want to just go to go.
We want to be close to ninety percent, which is
really really hard to do, and that's where the work
comes in. For us to trust these guys to go
and still trust they are going to make it ninety
percent of the time takes a lot lot of work
on their part and a lot of discipline, and they've
really brought into it so far.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah, I would imagine then, you know, I say this
as somebody who never had the green light if I
got down there, there's at the lower levels. You know,
you're fast, you can get a jump, you go. Maybe
you're not reading a picture, maybe there's not as much
into it. Walk me through the process of teaching a
guy how to be more than just a fast based
runner and instead a good base dealer.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, we you know your your full work is huge.
You can't have any false steps, any loss steps. We
spend a ton of time watching video of picture tendencies,
little tips that we think will tell us when we
think the ball is going to be delivered, understanding of
when they like to pick off, and then there's a
lot of full work involved with kind of gaining some ground. Basically,
(05:45):
if if you run from a stand still, it's pretty
hard to steal on a lot of pictures, and so
we do what we call different vaulting techniques where you're
kind of getting a little head start with a little jump,
but you have to have enough balance where if they
pick off, you can get back. And it's it's pretty
advanced stuff and you don't see it Panada, which makes
it hard to defend it's it's not a lot of
teams that do it, so it's tough to prepare for.
(06:06):
But what people don't see is we really have our
better base runners probably three times a week starting in August,
are doing some of this technique stuff, and so it
takes a lot of time.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Jordan Bischel is with us. The Bearcats off to a
terrific start. Took two out of three against Duke over
the weekend. They're off to Vegas for four against UNLV
than four against UC San Diego. Obviously, it sort of
depends on the part of the country you're in, and
you've spent your career in the northern part of the
United States. Walk me through the process of assembling a
(06:38):
college baseball schedule in a cold weather city.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah, well we failed this week. We scheduled a home
game for February eighteen, so we see how that panned out.
But actually we didn't even have that one planned. We
had a cancelation, so we had to try to get something.
And but you know, I'm pretty involved in the scheduling.
You know, we played ten league weekends, so obviously that's
set up for us. My goal early is to not
(07:04):
be crazy running back and forth, and so if you
look at this coming week, we go out to UNLV
and we stay out there and play at at U
See San Diego. That sounds really terrible for most people
listening right now. I'm sure we'll have to suffer through
that seventy five and sunny every day. But what I found,
and being up north even further, we've had years where
we've played twenty or twenty five games before we had
(07:26):
a home game. It's a back and forth that really
can wear these guys out. We got home about four
thirty in the morning on Sunday night, which means your
Monday is pretty shot, and before you know it, you're
back on the road Thursday, which you can do here
and there, but if you do that three, four or
five straight weeks, it takes a toll. So we try
to be strategic with when we travel, maybe staying on
the road a little bit longer. You'll see with our
(07:46):
midweek games, we try to play a lot either at
home or fairly local out of Miami, Ohio, out of Davier. Again,
the big twelves all over the country, so we have
to be a little strategic that if they're spending all
their time on buses and airplanes. It's it takes out
of our practice time, it takes out of our rest time,
it takes out of their school time, and so it
does take quite a bit of work to figure out
how to best schedule those those twenty six non conference games.
(08:10):
And you got a factor and strength to schedule too, right,
Who you play does matter a little bit when your
league has several several that large bits every year.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
What are the logistics that might might not be aware
of when you take a college baseball team on the
road for over a week.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Oh my yeah, the planning for the food, the ability
of me to not eat what the players are eating.
The biggest staff they get said like high level college athletes,
and then I eat what they eat, but eat the
ice cream afterwards too. So that's a problem, but it is.
It's amazing the team of people that goes with us.
We've got some of that coordinates, all our video, got
some of the coordinates all our travel. We've got our
(08:47):
strengths coach, our athletic trainer, our social media team will
send somebody on top of roster obviously, and so it
we've got such great staff. We've got such such great
people at Cincinnati. And that's not just baseball people, equipment
people and athletic training, and I mean, it makes my
job a lot easier, but it is. We traveled. We
(09:07):
had a group of fifty travel to Duke over the weekend,
and that you know, I included thirty four players, but
then you got sixteen other bodies trying to help these
guys out.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Off to Vegas, then La Jolla and then hopefully the
weather turns for the better and you get blessed with
good conditions when you come home to take on Toledo
on the fifth, and the home slate will start then
and hopefully you guys are still ranked. Certainly rooting for that.
I appreciate the time as always, coach, many thanks, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
We've got two weeks for everybody to buy their tickets
get out there. I can't promise wins, but I can
promise you come out you'll see fast, exciting baseball.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, I would concur with that. That's Jordan Bissel, the
baseball coach. That you see Bearcat's ranked in the top
twenty five D one baseball for the first time in
program history. It is twenty eight away from four o'clock
Sports headlines coming up on ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Station Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Traffic from the UC Health Traffic Center. At uce Health,
you'll find comprehensive care that's so personal it makes your
best tomorrow possible. That's boundless care for better outcomes. Expect
more at UCHealth dot com. Eastbound Ronald Reagan Highway. That
earlier accident now cleared away. Approaching Plainfield Road. Still going
to find a seven minute delay though. Back from Ridge
(10:29):
Road southbound Reading Road, it's an accident at Liberty Street
in eastbound Signs Road. An overturned vehicle at the Route
four bypass. I'm at ezelic with traffic.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
This report is sponsored by Rapid Radio.
Mo Egger News
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