Coach Thompson is the head coach at Auburn University, and has been a staple in collegiate baseball since the 1990’s. He has a record of 103-82 (.557) as the head coach of Auburn, where he took over in 2015. Before he arrived, he was an assistant at many stops along the way, most notably at Mississippi State University where he served as the pitching coach. In 2014, Baseball America and American Baseball Coaches Association National Assistant Coach of the Year. Eight of his former pitchers have made it in Major League Baseball since 2014, and he coached the number one pick in the 2018 MLB Draft in Casey Mize. As a player, he played at Itawamba Community College and is a member of the ICC Athletic Hall of Fame; he later transferred to Birmingham Southern University.
In this episode, Mike Linch talks with Coach Thompson about the excitement of the spring, the impact his former coach had on his life, Brian Shoop, the lessons he has learned from coaching, what God’s taught him through waiting, how he carved his niche in pitching.