New Duke baseball coach Corey Muscara talks new staff, roster
Former head coach Chris Pollard put Duke baseball on the map. Corey “Moose” Muscara is looking to take the Blue Devils further.
But first, he has to rebuild.
During his first appearance with the media since the announcement of his hiring last Thursday, Muscara detailed coaching staff, roster and facility updates, while also discussing his vision for getting Duke baseball over the Super Regional hump and advancing to the College World Series on Wednesday afternoon.
The former Wake Forest pitching coach brings 15 years of college coaching experience. In 2023, Muscara helped the Demon Deacons reach the College World Series for the first time since 1955, leading a pitching staff that won a program-record 54 games and led the nation in ERA (2.83), strikeout-to-walk ratio (4.26) and strikeouts per nine innings (12.1).
Before arriving at Duke, he had yet to serve as a head coach. Last week, he stepped in to fill the vacancy left by Pollard, who departed to become Virginia baseball’s head coach.
“In today’s college landscape, not just in baseball, but in all sports, everyone talks about what they need, what they need, what they need,” Muscara said. “Winners don’t talk about what they need. Winners find solutions. Winners get creative. Winners make players better.”
Muscara fills personnel
When filling positions for his first staff, Muscara went back to all the previous stops in his career.
First, Scott Loiseau, who spent last season as Dayton baseball’s head coach, will join Muscara as an associate head coach. Their relationship goes back to Muscara’s playing days at Franklin Pierce, where he competed in his final two years. When Loiseau was head coach at Southern New Hampshire, they worked together again in 2010 and 2012 — Muscara’s first coaching job.
Louiseau spent 14 seasons at Southern New Hampshire and compiled a record of 480-209-2, ranking eighth in winning percentage for Division II head coaches. He led the Penmen to 11 consecutive NCAA Division II Tournament appearances, eight NCAA Regional finals and five visits to the Division II College World Series.
In 2023, Louiseau joined Penn State as an associate head coach, helping the Nittany Lions to their first winning record since 2016.
“This is just a man that’s always found a way to win, and his players love him,” Muscara said. “He does it with grit. He does it with passion. He does it with big-time energy. And I can trust him and he’s loyal. It was an easy hire there. He brings head coaching experience to the table.”
Muscara also brought along Matt Wessinger, a volunteer assistant and first base coach from Wake Forest, to handle Duke’s hitting. Under Wessinger’s direction in 2023 when he oversaw base running and defense, the Demon Deacons posted a program high in fielding percentage (.979) and set a program record in runs scored (591).
“I’ve worked with him at two different schools, always been a winner,” Muscara said. “Every school he’s ever coached at, he’s coached in the NCAA Tournament.”
Muscara plans to handle the bulk of the pitching coaching, but he also hired Sean Fisher — Wake Forest’s former pitching lab coordinator — as a director of player development to assist in that department.
Will Craig, a former player for the Pittsburgh Pirates and a National Player of the Year at Wake Forest, will also join the staff to help with recruiting. Former Wake Forest assistant director Sean Coveny is moving to Duke to become the director of analytics, while Mickey Bassett, the Demon Deacons’ former director of baseball operations, is bringing his expertise to a similar role for the program.
Rebuilding the roster and Jack Coombs Field
Twenty-three Duke players entered the transfer portal this offseason. Six are following Pollard to Virginia.
Muscara and his staff are starting from scratch.
“It’s really tough to make heads or tails of how many people we actually have on our roster right now,” Muscara said. “Felt like the first 15 kids that I called were already going somewhere else when I spoke to them. That part of it, I can’t give you an exact answer. It’s very fluid. I can tell you that we’ve had four or two visits yesterday. We have another visit today. We have a lot of people coming in.”
Because of the timing of his hiring and the movement of the current roster, Muscara said next year’s roster will be filled with a lot of transfers. But traditionally, he wants the roster to be 75 to 80 percent high school players, with the rest of the team filled in with transfers.
And as the coaching staff pieces together its roster, renovations are continuing at Jack Coombs Field.
The first phase of the project was completed in 2024, renovating the dugouts and bringing the stadium up to NCAA postseason standards. This fall, it will move to Phase 2: The player performance center. According to athletic director Nina King, Phase 3, the construction of a new clubhouse, is still in the fundraising stage.
While Muscara said the project is still very “fluid,” a final product at Coombs Field is closer than before.
Muscara’s vision
It’s been 64 years since the Blue Devils played on the dirt in Omaha.
While Pollard launched Duke into the national spotlight, ending the program’s 55-year NCAA Tournament drought in 2016 and leading the Blue Devils to four Super Regional appearances in the past seven seasons, a College World Series appearance has remained elusive.
This past season, Duke hosted NCAA Tournament action for the first time at Coombs for a Durham Super Regional, yet fell to Murray State in Games 2 and 3 to end the season. Once again, the CWS drought continued.
To get over the hump, Muscara pointed to his vision for player development and an aggressive style of play. First, he wants Duke to develop different styles and options of play by relying on advanced scouting.
“I want to play aggressively,” Muscara said. “We’re going to run. We’re going to be aggressive to certain pitches in certain counts. We’re going to attack the strike zone aggressively. We’re going to play with energy. We’re going to play with big body language and presence.”
Then, the new head coach pointed to roster construction and focusing on finding different kinds of players with different skill sets so that the Blue Devils can play those diverse styles.
“When you have that diversity and you have that adaptability, it’s really tough to game plan for a team,” Muscara said. “Sometimes, certain teams get into one style, and if they hit the wrong matchup, they can be handled. But a team that’s a little bit of a chameleon that can play a lot of different styles, can play aggressively and is prepared, [they] can do a lot of special things. And that’s the way I want to play. It’s going to be the same thing on the pitching front.”