UC Irvine’s head baseball coach Dave Serrano said he will be in Eugene today to talk to athletic director Pat Kilkenny about the baseball head coaching position. In an article published Friday by the Newport Beach, Calif. Daily Pilot, Serrano said he has changed his position on the head coaching job and will talk to the University about the job opening.
“I was approached about three weeks ago by Oregon and their athletic director flew down here to meet with me,” Serrano said in the Daily Pilot. “And what I heard was fabulous. They were pressuring me to come visit and I said yes. But, after a couple days of thinking about it, I decided to turn them down.
“Then, I got to thinking that I didn’t see exactly what it was I was turning down, so I began discussions with [Kilkenny] again.”
Serrano is the newest target of Kilkenny. Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin and Dave Brundage, the coach of Atlanta’s Triple-A affiliate in Richmond, Va., both turned down taking over Oregon’s revived baseball program.
Though the baseball team will not take the diamond until 2009, finding a coach to take the reins – and begin recruiting – has been a goal of Kilkenny’s. Serrano led the Anteaters to the College World Series this past season, three years after taking over the job and five years after the Anteaters restarted their baseball program. He was rumored to be a target of other top baseball programs, including Tennessee.