Brian Green has reportedly hired his new coaching staff on Wichita State baseball team
A new staff under Brian Green is beginning to form on the Wichita State baseball team.
According to reports from D1Baseball.com, the new Shocker manager is expected to bring Washington State pitching coach Anthony Claggett with him to Wichita and also hire former Oklahoma assistant Clay Overcash and Johnson County Community College assistant coach Anthony Miller. All names were confirmed by sources from The Eagle.
A Wichita State official could not yet confirm the additions, as the athletic department typically waits until all staff are officially signed before making a public announcement.
Claggett, a 38-year-old former pitcher who reached the majors, has been Green’s pitching coach since 2018. Wichita State will be the third program where he has followed Green, as he started at New Mexico State and has worked at Washington State since 2020.
Under Claggett’s tutelage, staffs at both New Mexico State (2018) and Washington State (2022) set single-season program records for strikeouts. In his two seasons in Las Cruces, the Aggies won 40 games with the second-best staff ERA in the WAC and then reached an NCAA Regional. At Washington State, his staff’s ERA floated between 5.17 and 5.55 with middle-to-bottom-half finishes in the Pac-12.
Overcash, who worked six seasons as OU’s recruiting coordinator, recently resigned from his position and landed in Wichita less than two weeks later. He helped the Sooners land the 12th-best recruiting class in the country, per Perfect Game, in 2021, then followed that up with the 22nd-best recruiting class in 2022. OU’s future recruiting classes were also ranked in the top-30 in Perfect Game’s rankings.
Overcash worked specifically with catchers during his time at OU and was the first-base coach during games. Before his time with the Sooners, he worked 18 years as a regional scout for the Chicago White Sox organization.
Miller brings plenty of Kansas connections to the staff, as the 28-year-old Overland Park native was a star player himself at Blue Valley Southwest and Johnson County Community College. He also has a past connection to Green, as he was committed to playing for him at New Mexico State before he decided to turn pro instead in 2015.
After finishing his professional career in 2019, Miller spent three years as a volunteer assistant split between Johnson County and McLennan (Texas) Community College. His first year as a full-time assistant was spent as the hitting coach this past season at Johnson County, which won 56 games, reached the NJCAA Div. I World Series and finished as the No. 2 hitting team in the country with a .364 team batting average.
A recent rule change by the NCAA transformed what was the volunteer assistant coach role into a full-time position. Green can also fill out his staff with a director of operations and analytics director.
This story was originally published June 20, 2023 at 11:52 AM.
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