How former Gamecocks assistant Skylar Meade got Troy back to the NCAA Tournament

Former Gamecocks assistant Skylar Meade thought he knew what he had in his team but needed another set of outside eyes to really confirm what he already suspected.

That came in November when D1Baseball’s Aaron Fitt swung by a Troy scrimmage and saw what Meade had been seeing for a few weeks. Players were diving around, the increased athleticism on the mound and power at the plate and the makings of a tournament team. 

So it’s easy for Meade, as he sits on a bus barrelling down the backroads of Alabama en route to the Tuscaloosa regional and reflects on that moment and how far the Troy program has come.

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“He’s like, ‘Dude, you guys are legit.’ He had been everywhere in the fall. It made us feel good because it confirmed what we were pretty sure of,” Meade told GamecockCentral. “I told our players that. I’m like, ‘Hey men, this is what you are. This is what people are going to think of you as long as you’re doing the necessary things.’ Thankfully they did.” 

Two years ago Meade had just finished the 2021 year with the Gamecocks where he helped transform the pitching staff into one of the best in the country.

Meade and the Gamecocks put together an Omaha-level pitching corps that included three draftees in 2021, another drafted in 2022 and another that will be drafted this offseason in Will Sanders. 

A few weeks after that season ended, Meade left the Gamecocks to take the Troy head coaching job with the task of rejuvenating that program. 

In its heyday under Bobby Pierce from 2006 to 2015, Troy was consistently a 35 to 40-win team and made four regionals in a 10-year stretch. 

But since 2016 the Trojans made just one tournament. They won at least 35 games just one time in that stretch, punctuated by a 27-26 record in 2021. 

That’s the program Meade inherited coming over from the Gamecocks program. So he and his staff got to work in the short term prepping for the long term. 

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“You’re riding this crazy balance of being aggressive in recruiting and trying to generate buzz and get players. But you have to play the patience game. It’s making the right decisions and being prepared to do both whether it’s moving fast on a kid or you need to wait for the right guy to fall into your lap essentially,” Meade said.

“There were times in that first year where my impatience–whether in recruiting or something we were doing–I’m not going to say they were always wrong decisions but you sit there and say, ‘Man, this is why patience is a massive virtue.’ That’s not easy for us to do, but I think we’ve appreciated more as we’ve gone along.”

“We’re just really tough, dude. We have enough talent with toughness and that’s a pretty good combo to have. That’s solely the reason we were able to get this earned at-large bid. Dude, we were an NCAA Tournament team all year. We started 11-0 and never wavered. That’s pretty impressive in itself to be consistently good all year.”

There were signs of growth in year one, finishing eight games above .500 with series wins over Indiana and Louisiana making it to the semifinal of the Sun Belt tournament. 

But the real fruit, at least early, came this season. Meade maintains Troy was a tournament team from the jump, and the Trojans showed why.

They won their first 11 games of the year and, despite a bevy of pitching injuries and losing the team’s starting catcher for six weeks, went 18-12 in the Sun Belt and finished No. 38 in the RPI. 

They’ll head to Alabama’s regional Friday to play Boston College. It’s a matchup of two very dangerous team in what was a well-deserved at-large bid.  

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“You’re driving yourself bananas so you’re trying to do things to get away from it. But the reality is you’re so obsessed for like 64 hours about it. It wasn’t fun at all. It actually really sucked. And Monday morning was awesome,” Meade said about being selected. “But the shackles got taken off as soon as our name popped up and it said we were going up to Bama…We could’ve cared less. They could have sent us to the moon and we would have been fine.”

In Meade’s first fall with the staff, the average fastball for the entire 16-pitcher staff was in the mid-80s and now it’s sitting in the low 90s. The Trojans had just a few athletic runners on the roster he inherited. Now they have 15 players who run a 6.9-second 60-yard dash or better.

A team put together by a host of junior college players is hitting .285 as a team with 102 home runs. It’s headlined by Shane Lewis, who hits .291 with 27 jacks and 76 RBI. 

“I thought our first year we maximized what we could do. You could argue we did maximize to this point what we could do,” Meade said. “We had to make real changes. We did and the guys worked their butts off to all improve themselves…I think because we really banded together it’s why we’ve been able to get to the point we are. Hell, it’s why I’m talking to you while on a bus heading to a regional.” 

A win at any point in the weekend and Meade would clinch Troy’s first 40-win season since 2018. It would just the third time it’s happened since 2013.

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“I’ve had an absolute blast for the last 22 months. I wouldn’t change any of it. I know that I always believed this year’s team was an NCAA Tournament. But it was also a massive relief when we made that reality happen. Like anything, your mindset flips to the next thing. Like, ‘All right, now we have to win.’”

The story isn’t over for Meade and Troy. The program has a chance to advance out of what is considered one of the toughest regionals in the NCAA Tournament this season. 

Two wins this weekend would send Troy to its first regional final since 2013. Three wins and Troy would advance to the program’s first Super Regional. 

“At some point, we’ll certainly (look back). But I’ll blink and think we have to do this, this and this to get us to the next level. Hopefully, our story isn’t done this year,” Meade said. “I hope our story has a few more chapters to go. But I hope the program’s story is just a prelude to what we can do down the road.”

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