Minium: With His Team Struggling, Chris Finwood Had Little Time to Enjoy His 400th Victory at ODU
The ODU baseball team has played hard if not always well against a challenging schedule in a year when the Monarchs have no true home stadium.
By Harry Minium
NORFOLK, Va. – Chris Finwood was shaking hands with Troy Head Baseball Coach Skylar Meade Sunday evening at Harbor Park when he learned he had just won his 400th game as ODU’s head coach.
As public address announcer Jack Ankerson was recounting the final score – ODU 9, Troy 5 – Ankerson also told the crowd that the victory was Finwood’s 400th at ODU.
“I had no idea,” said Finwood, who rarely makes a big deal about personal achievements, and especially not when his team is struggling.
“I don’t keep up with that stuff, so it was a little bit of a surprise.”
His Monarchs are 10-20 following Tuesday’s victory over Norfolk State and even if the deck was stacked against ODU before the season began, the record is a disappointment to Finwood and his staff.
ODU has no home games on campus this season because Bud Metheny Ballpark is undergoing a $24 million renovation. The Monarchs practice at the Bud, but dress in the adjacent Jim Jarrett Athletic Administration Building.
And to say the Monarchs are overscheduled is like saying the stock market is a little stressed.
ODU’s non-conference schedule has been ridiculously difficult. ODU is 2-8 against teams now ranked among the top 26 in the D-1 Baseball RPI.
The Monarchs have played six “home” games, three in Hampton’s War Memorial Stadium and three at Harbor Park. And Finwood said “while War Memorial and Harbor Park are in our area code, we still have to get on a bus and drive to get to our home games.”
ODU’s RPI is ranked 97th nationally among the 307 Division I baseball schools, a remarkable stat for a team with a 10-20 record.
The Monarchs still have time to win enough games to finish with a winning record, make the Sun Belt Conference Tournament and perhaps make a postseason run. But losing has been a bitter pill for Finwood to swallow.
Since coming to ODU in 2012, he’s only had three losing seasons. Finwood’s last six teams had a combined 190-105 record.
He is 401-322 at ODU and 643-573 overall and is just 22 victories shy of tying Bud Metheny as the University’s all-time winningest coach.
Finwood long ago passed two other legendary ODU coaches – the late Mark Newman, who won 311 games, and the late Tony Guzzo, who had 303 victories.
He’s taken ODU to two NCAA Regionals, including the 2021 team, which lost to Virginia in extra innings in an NCAA Regional final. He also had two more teams with RPIs that appeared good enough for at-large bids, but just missed out on NCAA Tournament berths.
He's managed to recruit good players and win a lot of games while playing in a stadium that was so out of date that recruits weren't shown the home locker room.
“Any time you are second in all-time wins at a school, that’s very special,” Finwood said. “ODU is a very special place for me.”
He won’t surpass Metheny this season, but almost certainly will next season when ODU opens play in the revamped the Ellmer Family Baseball Complex, which will have 2,000 chairback seats, luxury suites and new locker and team rooms.
Unable to play true home games, Finwood scheduled aggressively this spring. ODU opened with three games at Georgia Tech, which is 26-7 and ranked 13th nationally, and also played three games at No. 12 Auburn.
The Monarchs have also played at RPI No. 82 Virginia, three games at No. 88 Charlotte and a game against No. 47 Mississippi State in Biloxi, Mississippi. And that doesn’t include ODU’s Sun Belt schedule, which has so far included three games at No. 46 Southern Miss, and three against No. 26 Troy.
This weekend, the Monarchs bus to Statesboro, Georgia for three games against No. 54 Georgia Southern.
“You look at some of the teams we’ve played, and I mean it’s like everybody’s having a career year,” Finwood said.
In ODU's first six series of Sun Belt play, the Monarchs will have played four of the league’s top six teams. "So, we haven’t caught any breaks in the conference schedule, either," he said.
And it’s been particularly frustrating that the Monarchs have come oh-so-close to winning a ton of games.
“I’d say 12 of 13 of those losses are games we could have won,” Finwood said. “Games where we needed a few runs or a few stops and we just didn’t get it done.
“We expect to win. We are used to winning. So, yeah, this has been a difficult season so far.”
Yet he says he hasn’t been disappointed in how hard his team has played. The Monarchs haven’t always played well, “but the guys haven’t quit playing. Their energy’s been good.
“They’re trying. The coaching staff is trying. We’re coaching harder than we’ve ever coached.”
Yet, with a team that is road weary, he’s been smart enough to dial things back a little.
“I was pushing really hard there for a while, but you have been to be careful that you don’t over do things because they’re not trying to lose. They’re trying their best to win.
“You have to stay positive as much as you can.
“I know our guys are tired. I know fatigue is an issue. We’ve going to go over close to 10,000 miles on the road after this Georgia Southern trip.”
And in spite of knowing this season would be difficult, playing every game away from home is something you can’t quite prepare for.
“You don’t have any idea what it’s going to be like until you go through it,” he said.
“It’s tiring, more tiring than I thought it woudl be. It’s little things you don’t think about that wear on you. When you play a home game, you’ve got to load all of your equipment up on a bus or a van and take it to wherever you’re playing, unload it, play, and then come back to campus.
“We usually get 35 times a year to just show up to our locker room, change, go out on the field, and come back in the locker room and everything’s there.”
The Monarchs are young this season and that’s largely by design. Finwood was realistic enough to know that with no home stadium, he wasn’t going sign big-name guys in the transfer portal, so he recruited mostly high school and junior college players.
Finwood said he’s had some recruiting misses in the portal. “We recruited players who are good people but misjudged talent with a few. They’ve all been good kids but we haven’t had enough good players.
“A lot of people have backed away from recruiting high school players, but we’ve had the most success getting high school kids, developing them and sprinkling in junior college players as needed.”
He said renderings of the new Ellmer Family Baseball Complex helped him and his staff recruit a very good class during the fall.
“I think the new stadium will continue to help our recruiting, but it’s also going to help our guys just how they feel about themselves,” he said.
“We knew this was going to be a difficult year and it has been. We’re learning from it and trying to deal with the adversity and grow from it.
“I know that all of our guys coming back can’t wait to get into the new stadium.”
Asked if he’s had time to enjoy his 400th victory, Finwood said no.
“It’s nice, but I don’t do this for how many wins I’ve got. It’s nice for people who want to talk about it. It means you’ve coached a long time. It’s great that I’ve been at a school long enough to do that, which is not always the case these days.
“I would be proud to have the most career wins at a place like ODU. We’ve had some great coaches here. To have more wins than all of them is something I would really be proud of.”
Finwood said once ODU has moved into the Ellmer Family Baseball Complex, he expects the Monarchs to be among the elite in the Sun Belt, which is a power league in baseball.
“I want to see how good we can be in that stadium,” he said.
“It’s one thing to have renderings to show to players and another to be able to bring them here and show them what a great stadium we have, show them our new locker room, all of our great facilities.
“We’ve done so much with so little for so long. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do with a really nice facility.
“I think we can do some really great things.”
Minium is ODU’s senior executive writer. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram