Smithfield, RI -- After guiding the Bryant University baseball team to its most successful season in program history and the university's first-ever NCAA Division I tournament victory, head coach Steve Owens has been named the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) NCAA Division I Northeast Region Coach of the Year, it was announced Monday.
The honor is the first for Owens as a member of the Bulldogs but the sixth of collegiate coaching career. In May, Owens was named the Northeast Conference Coach of the Year for the second-straight season. This past spring marked Owens' third-straight 30-win season at Bryant, just the second 40-win season of his career and his 22nd-straight winning season. In three seasons, Owens has posted a record of 108-62-1 and his career record now stands at 695-361-2, good enough for a .657 career winning percentage.
In his third year with the Bulldogs, Owens led his team to not only the greatest season in program history but also in NEC history. Under Owens's tutelage, the Black and Gold won 30 games for the seventh-straight year, posted a 45-18-1 record, won NEC regular-season and postseason titles and earned Bryant's first-ever Division I NCAA tournament victory with a 4-1 victory over Arkansas at the Manhattan Regional. The 45 wins set a program record and a conference record, while Bryant's 28-5 record during regular season conference play shattered the previous record.
Facing the toughest schedule in program history, Owens put his team up against College World Series participant Oregon State in the second week of the year, a four-game series that prepared the Bulldogs for their finest season. Two weeks later, the Bulldogs defeated Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio, before beginning a 19-game winning streak that spanned nearly a month from March 22 to April 19. The streak earned the Black and Gold their first-ever national ranking (No. 30 in the College Baseball News) and set the mark for the longest winning streak in the country this season. The Bulldogs also earned victories over top Northeast teams such as Stony Brook (10-0), Rhode Island (8-1) and Northeastern (10-3).
With the success of the team came the success of several of Owens's players this spring. Those honors included the highest of all for three seniors – Kevin Brown (Northborough, Mass.), Joseph Michaud (Milford, Mass.) and Peter Kelich (Jackson, N.J.) – as they were all selected in the 2013 MLB Amateur Draft. They became the 30th, 31st and 32nd players that have signed professional contracts under Owens. Among many other achievements, Brown was named a Third Team ABCA All-American, First Team ABCA All-Northeast and the NEC Player of the Year. Freshman AJ Zarozny (Shrewsbury, Mass.) also thrived in his first year with Owens, earning Louisville Slugger Freshman All-American honors and NEC Rookie of the Year honors. In all, four were named ABCA All-Northeast and six more were named All-NEC.