UConn’s baseball team is benefitting from a veteran presence in the NCAA Tournament, and some of those veterans are nearly old enough to be considered “grizzled.”
“This guy’s going to be 26 years old in October,” coach Jim Penders said, pointing across the podium to Luke Broadhurst, whose three-run homer staked the Huskies to their 4-1 win over Oklahoma in the NCAA Regional Saturday night. “When I was 25, I was married and thinking about buying a house, but he’s still getting to play college baseball, so he’s my hero.”
Between them on the podium was Stephen Quigley, 24, who pitched masterfully for eight innings. Both Broadhurst and Quigley came to UConn from one of the unlikeliest places one would expect to find talent capable of competing at this highest level of college ball. They are among the latest wave of transfers from Division III programs to join UConn on the Road to Omaha, the program’s long-held goal of reaching the College World Series for the first time since 1979.
UConn baseball stuns Oklahoma, 4-1, needs one win to reach NCAA Super Regional
“That’s an older team,” Oklahoma coach Skip Johnson said. “I think four or five, maybe six or seven of them are graduate seniors, and they’ve played a lot of baseball in their life. I think (Quigley) has been in college baseball since 2019. It shows. It shows the composure he had in front of a great crowd. It just showed.”
The Huskies (34-23), with wins over Duke and Oklahoma, were in position to advance from the Regional late Sunday night with a win against one or the other. If necessary, a winner-take-all final game would be played Monday.
Indeed, six of UConn’s starters against the Sooners were seniors or grad students, and five were transfers from D-III.
When Penders began this run of excellence at UConn in 2010– a team with six future major leaguers– he got most of his talent from Connecticut, or neighboring northeastern states, generally players overlooked by southern and western schools, or in the MLB Draft. When transfer rules changed, no longer requiring a year to sit out, Penders and his staff began identifying players from mid-majors, or Division II and III, who had developed their talent to a level where they might stick at UConn.
Ben Huber, from D-III Limestone College, became a lineup mainstay for UConn, one of 10 transfers that helped the Huskies reach the Super Regionals in 2022, one win shy of the CWS.
Broadhurst, from Stafford Springs, started at UConn in 2018, but, hampered by a shoulder injury, he couldn’t crack the lineup. He moved to Eastern Connecticut, and was a major force in the Warriors’ Division III national championship team in 2022. After graduating, he returned to UConn for his post-grad, and extra COVID year, and he has hit .294 with 24 homers and 92 RBI in 95 games, no blows bigger than his seventh-inning homer on Saturday night, which extended the Huskies’ lead to 4-0.
Quigley, a righthander from Massachusetts, played at Wheaton College (Norton, Mass.), where he played mostly at shortstop. At UConn, he is 9-5 with a 3.78 ERA in 26 starts. He held Oklahoma, with a .319 team batting average, to seven hits in eight innings, striking out two, but not issuing a walk until the ninth inning, by which time he had thrown over 120 pitches.
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Centerfielder Caleb Shpur, 22, from Housatonic Regional High, helped Endicott reach the D-III World Series last season, transferred to UConn with two years eligibility and is hitting .282 with 26 stolen bases. Right fielder Jake Studley (.305, 15 homers in 99 games), also transferred from Wheaton. Shortstop Paul Tammaro, from Oswego State in New York, has hit .326 in 82 games the last two seasons, and has made only two errors in his last 51 games. Reserve catcher Matt Malcolm (eight homers in 33 games), from East Lyme and ECSU, also made the jump from D-III.
These players may be new, or relatively new to playing baseball on TV, or in front of crowds the size of Oklahoma’s home crowd of 3,811 on Saturday, but they knew how to slow and quiet things down against the No. 9 overall seed in the tournament.
“There’s no sweeter sound than a quiet host crowd,” Penders said. “… I’ve got a bunch of guys who can rent cars without their parents’ signatures. It’s awesome, because you’re coaching men. When we go back to the hotel, I don’t have to tell them to get in bed, they know they have to get in bed. It’s very different from when I initially had this job, but it’s very satisfying. They’re a low-maintenance group. It’s a quiet and confident group, a little more quiet than I’m used to, but there’s a real confidence to them. And there is no nonsense when you’re dealing with men, not with boys, and the young guys have unbelievable examples to follow.”
