Skip Johnson, Oklahoma Sooners

It does not take long while listening to the Oklahoma Sooners Skip Johnson on the College Baseball Now podcast to realize why University of Oklahoma Vice President and Athletics Director Joe Castiglione hired Johnson as the 10th head coach of the OU baseball program on June 19, 2017.

In the College Baseball Now podcast, Johnson gives listeners insight into the Sooner baseball program, including outfielder Steele Walker, who spent this past summer on USA Baseball’s Collegiate National Team and will enter the 2018 college baseball campaign as one of the top players in the game. He also talks about developing confidence in players and describes the type of players who wants in the Sooner program. He also discusses his career, which includes spending 10 years on the staff at the University of Texas with legendary head coach Augie Garrido.

Johnson served as the Sooners’ pitching coach in 2017 after a 25-year coaching career in the state of Texas, including the most recent 10 years as an assistant and associate head coach at the University of Texas. As the Sooners’ pitching coach this past spring, he helped OU to its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2013.

“It’s an exciting new day for Sooner baseball with the hiring of Skip Johnson as our head coach,” said Castiglione. “Once our search got underway last week, we spoke to many people throughout the youth, college and professional baseball worlds about the candidates we were considering, and the information gleaned from those conversations further validated our belief that Skip is the right and the best choice for our program now and going forward.

“Our main focus with any coaching search is making decisions grounded in what’s best for our student-athletes and our program overall. Skip emerged as the best candidate and he’s diligently prepared for this special opportunity. We obviously got to know Skip this past year as a member of our coaching staff, but we also know about his career of success, his previous head coaching experience and him being mentored by the winningest coach in the history of college baseball, Augie Garrido. Skip’s been part of championships and he’s been to Omaha. That’s where we want to be. Knowing the passion he possesses, he will hit the ground running. We’re looking forward to officially introducing him as our head coach at tomorrow’s news conference.”

Johnson made an immediate impact on the Sooner pitching staff la...