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Here's a story from Brandon Justice, Maize&Blue Review Senior Editor.

Nearly three weeks after Clemson head coach Erik Bakich left Ann Arbor after ten seasons, Michigan finally has its new baseball coach.

Former Arizona State and Indiana head coach Tracy Smith will lead the program, the University announced Sunday afternoon.

Smith has been the head coach at three Division I programs, rising the ranks from Miami (OH) (1997-2005) to Indiana (2006-2014) and most recently, Arizona State (2015-2021), where he was fired with two years left on his contract.

Despite never making it out of an NCAA regional at ASU and eventually being pushed out, Smith had an illustrious Big Ten career in Bloomington.

In 2013, when he inevitably left Indiana, the Hoosiers won the Big Ten regular-season and tournament titles. They hosted a regional for the first time in program history and went to the College World Series. At 47 years old, Smith brought home National Coach of the Year.

Nine years later, Smith returns to the conference to lead a depleted Wolverines program that's lost seven incoming freshmen, four transfers with still a dozen players in the transfer portal.

Smith has experienced great success and failure. Most recently, it was a failure, which will be the glaring question to a coaching search that saw three primary candidates pull themselves out of the race when they had it won.

A long, winding coaching search is over.

Other candidates left on the board and interested included Padres hitting coach Michael Brdar, Central Michigan head coach Jordan Bischel, and Auburn assistant coach Karl Nonnemaker.

Michigan went with the only candidate who's won as a head coach in the Big Ten and coached one of 29 Big Ten teams to ever go to the College World Series.

It's a bit of a gamble, but Smith was the safest bet to the athletic department at U-M.

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