The search for the new Director of Athletics at Mississippi State is reportedly over. There will be a press conference at 1 p.m. today at The Mill Conference Center where MSU will seemingly announce baseball head coach John Cohen as the new AD. This will make Cohen the fourth MSU AD in a row to be hired from within MSU.
Cohen was named the assistant AD after his contract was restructured this summer following an SEC regular season title winning campaign. Cohen, a graduate of the MSU class of 1990, played baseball at MSU and was an English major before going to graduate school at Missouri.
Cohen was named head coach in 2008 after the departure of Ron Polk. Before coming to MSU he was the head coach at Kentucky. Cohen, who is from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has taken MSU baseball to the post-season in five of his last six years including a second-place finish as the College World Series in 2013. He is married to Nelle Cohen and has two children.
While there is no comment from MSU yet, Keenum had this to say about the candidate image they had when the search commenced last month.
“To find an individual with vision and leadership to meet the high expectations for success at Mississippi State,” Keenum said.
Cohen declined to comment about the report he would be named AD in a phone call today.
The hire comes after Scott Stricklin left for the AD job at Florida. More information about that can be found here. Senior Associate AD Scott Wetherbee was named interim AD last week while MSU completed their search.
The hiring of Cohen leaves MSU without a baseball coach but it seems MSU has reportedly already found their man in Andy Cannizaro from LSU. Next Level Baseball were the first to report the hire and the report was then later confirmed by D1baseball.com writer Kendall Rodgers. MSU nor LSU have yet to confirm the report.
Cannizaro is the recruiting coordinator and hitting coach at LSU. He is from Mandeville, Louisiana, and was a scout for the New York Yankees for five years. In his first year at LSU, the Tigers led the nation in base hits with 762, were third in both doubles and stolen bases with 146 and 130 respectively.
More details to follow after the press conference at 1 p.m. For live updates follow @Reflectoronline on Twitter.
The news of Cohen’s hire was first reported by Michael Bonner at The Clarion-Ledger and was later supported by Joel Coleman from the Starkville Daily News.
John Cohen reportedly named new AD; Andy Cannizaro set to become baseball coach
Taylor Rayburn
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November 4, 2016
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