Former Hokies coach Pete Hughes leads Kansas State baseball against Virginia in Super Regional (2024)

MIKE BARBERRichmond Times-Dispatch

CHARLOTTESVILLE – For 27 of the past 28 years, Pete Hughes has been a college baseball head coach. In that time, at Trinity, Boston College, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma and now Kansas State, he’s racked up 819 victories.

So why, after all that time and all that winning, would the 56-year-old Massachusetts native suddenly – and dramatically – change his approach to the game?

“I haven’t done it the right way,” Hughes said bluntly Wednesday morning. “Because I haven’t gone to Omaha yet.”

After upsetting No. 5 overall seed Arkansas last weekend in the Fayetteville Regional, Hughes’s Wildcats will play at Virginia this weekend, the first super regional appearance of his career.

Hughes brought Virginia Tech to the NCAA tournament in 2010 and 2013 and got Oklahoma there in 2017. That was where each of those seasons ended, two weekends short of the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, the goal Hughes isn’t shy about discussing.

“I haven’t gone to Omaha. That still drives me,” Hughes said candidly. “When that stops being my motivation, I’ll be playing bingo in a lake house somewhere. But until then, I am consumed with it. I have to change, because I haven’t gone. We have to do something better. I do.”

Hughes studied winning programs. He talked to other coaches. And, maybe most importantly, he listened to his staff, a group that includes his son, Thomas, and his former Virginia Tech star, Austin Wates.

Then, before last season, Hughes instituted a major change. His batters would focus on drawing walks, taking more pitches and working deeper into counts, even if it meant occasionally striking out looking, long a cardinal sin in Hughes’ eyes.

His runners would look to steal more bases, even if it meant occasionally running themselves out of a potential big inning.

“He’s very, very forward thinking,” Wates said. “He’s got some old-school about him, as far as coaching goes, and that’s kind of what I remember about him as a player. But now, being on this side of it, every single year he goes back and reevaluates.”

In Hughes’s first four years at Kansas State, his teams walked 3.8 times per game. The past two seasons, that number has jumped to 5.6.

His first four years with the Wildcats, they stole 0.9 bases per game. The past two, they’ve averaged 2.1.

“One thing that drives my dad absolutely crazy is striking out looking. It’s his pet peeve,” Thomas said. “And Austin said, ‘If we really want to buy into this walk philosophy, you’re going to have to live with some strikeouts looking.’ Of course, he rolled his eyes, but then he said, ‘Do you think it’ll help us win and score more runs?’ So, we’ve completely changed. It’s turned around our offense.”

If Hughes has an unusually deep level of trust in his staff, that’s in part because of the deep history he has with them.

Of his five children, Thomas – the oldest – was the quickest to earn the right to be in his dad’s dugout on gamedays, working as a batboy at Boston College.

“You were always trying to pass the eye test to be dugout ready,” Thomas said this week. “One, you had to be able to handle some swearing. And two, you had to be able to keep your mouth shut and behave, especially in tense moments in games.”

Hughes’s middle son, Dominic, now an outfielder at Kansas State, had to wait the longest. As a youngster, he liked to pluck the batting gloves out of players’ pockets and mess with the Gatorade jugs. But Thomas, at an early age, proved to his father he belonged in a baseball dugout.

“When he was 5 or 6 years old, he would sit in the stands with me recruiting and watch an entire baseball game, take everything in,” Hughes said. “There was nothing that distracted him. That was kind of my eye test, when the guys are locked in enough to appreciate the game and what’s going and not mess with our guys.”

Thomas played for Hughes at Oklahoma, then transferred to Kansas State to spend his final college season on his dad’s team.

Wates, who starred at St. Christopher’s, is like a second son on the coaching staff for Hughes. When Hughes took the Virginia Tech job in 2007, his first recruiting call was to Wates.

(His second was to Russell Wilson, but since Wilson was set on playing football and baseball and the Hokies’ had Tyrod Taylor at quarterback, that was a short conversation.)

Wates helped lead Tech to the 2010 regional before going on to a pro career. When Wates was playing minor league ball, he lived with the Hughes family in Norman, while Hughes was the coach at Oklahoma.

“He’s like a second father. He’s a mentor. He’s one of my closest confidants,” Wates said. “Every move that I make, everything I’m thinking about my future, my family’s future, is always run through him, just because how much I value his opinion.”

That feeling goes both ways. For all his years in the game, Hughes stands ready to adapt if his assistants bring him an idea that can help his team win.

“I’m always listening,” Hughes said. “I’ll dig my heels in every once in a while, when it comes to my core beliefs, but I’m also looking to change if it will get us to Omaha.”