First-year coach brings winning history, attitude

First-year IU baseball coach Tracy Smith knows how to build a program up from the bottom of a conference.\nSmith hopes part of that equation includes the addition of two star transfers, the team announced Monday: Tad Reida, a redshirt sophomore from Wichita State University, and Brett Sager, a redshirt freshman from Lousiana State University.\n"Tad is a 'baseball rat,' and I mean it in a good way," Smith said in a statement. "Brett adds a quality glove for us in the infield."\nSmith joins both players as a new addition to the IU program. Smith spent nine seasons as the coach at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, before taking the helm of the Hoosiers following the 2005 season. He inherited a 12-40 program in his first year at Miami, but quickly turned the program around.\nIn those nine seasons, Smith appeared in the Mid-American Conference championship game six times, won two MAC titles, accumulated a .590 winning percentage and finished third on Miami's all-time wins list.\nHis most sterling success, however, might have been his final season in Oxford. He led his team to a 45-18 season record and the MAC tournament title before being ousted from the NCAA Tournament by eventual national champion Texas. \nDespite the success at Miami, Smith found himself frustrated with his situation, which led to his decision to accept the offer to coach at IU.\n"We had things going at Miami in terms of winning," Smith said. "The one frustration I had was that it was a one-team league. You had to win the conference tournament to play in the NCAA's."\nSmith's interest in IU is due partly to the fact that the Big Ten Conference is a multiple-bid league to the NCAA Tournament. Playing in the MAC allowed no margin for error or bad luck during the conference tournament.\n"Everything you work for came down to being good and also being lucky for one weekend," Smith said.\nAnother factor in Smith's decision to leave a thriving Miami program for an IU team that finished last in the Big Ten a season ago was Smith's first-hand experience.\nHe was a pitching coach under former coach Bob Morgan for two seasons. In 1996, Smith's final season, IU won the Big Ten Tournament and advanced to the NCAA Midwest Regional. \n"Part of the rationale was, 'Hey, we know we can win here, it's been done,'" Smith said. "There's no reason to say we can't do it again."\nSmith brings with him not only a winning track record, but also a coaching style the players say they believe will help them rebound from a disappointing 2005 campaign.\n"He allows us to slow things down and ask questions if we need to," senior pitcher Josh Lewis said. "There's an emphasis on getting people to learn and getting everyone on the same page."\nThe learning philosophy helped Smith build a winning baseball tradition at Miami, and that gives him credibility with the players he is inheriting.\n"The fact that he had taken over a program that was pretty much at the bottom and built them up over a short period of time was pretty impressive," senior outfielder Jay Brant said.\nSmith said he hopes his past success and winning philosophy will help the IU program reach a position similar to Miami, atop their respective conferences. But Smith has set only moderate goals for the time being. \n"We want to make the Big Ten Tournament this year," Lewis said. "That's our main goal"