Tim Peeler: Chris Hart's drive to recruit, win helped NC State return to Omaha again

One of the first things NC State associate head coach Chris Hart did when he was elevated from director of baseball operations to full-time assistant and recruiting coordinator was change the way the program scouted and approached its potential recruits. He wanted the Wolfpack to get involved earlier in the process, to identify players with long-range potential in their high school freshman and sophomore years, something longtime coach Elliott Avent was not on board with at the time. “Looking around the country, we were behind in early recruiting,” Hart says. “We needed to go recruit kids earlier and get kids at a younger age. That was my focus. Coach said ‘I have a little bit of a tough time with that, but if you feel comfortable with it, then I’ll take the handcuffs off and you go do it.’ “We had to go out and win the best kids in the state and the only way to do that in North Carolina was to beat people to the punch. That’s what we tried to do.”