Willis earns 500th career victory
LSU Eunice head coach Jeff Willis tallied his 500th career win – all with the Bengals – with a 5-4 comeback win on Friday night.
“I’ll be the first one to say it’s nothing I’ve done; it’s all been the assistant coaches and all the time and effort they have put into it with recruiting our student-athletes and coaching those guys up, and then the players themselves who have actually gone out and performed at a high level,” Willis said.
“I appreciate all the hard work from our assistant coaches and all the effort and work that our players put in. It is not an individual honor; it’s everyone that has been involved in our program.”
Through Friday night’s game, Willis has accumulated a 500-128 career record, a .796 winning percentage.
During his 10 year tenure as the Bengal coach he has received seven ABCA Diamond Regional Coach of the Year Awards, seven NJCAA Region 23 Coach of the Year Awards, six NJCAA District Coach of the Year Awards, a Louisville Slugger Coach of the Year Award, and four NJCAA National Coach of the Year Awards.
In January, he was honored as a Regional Coach of the Year and National Coach of the Year by the American Baseball Coaches Association.
Now in his 11th season, Willis has led the Bengals to seven Regional Championships, six District Championships, and six World Series appearances with four National Championships and two third-place finishes. Also, every team record has been broken under the leadership of Willis.
Willis served as the head coach of the NJCAA National Team which finished fourth in the 25th Anniversary of the Honkbal Tournament in Haarlem, Netherlands. He also coached the NJCAA National Team in the summer of 2008 competing against the Chinese Taipai National Team.
Willis will go for win #501 tomorrow afternoon when the Bengals host Southwest Mississippi College tomorrow afternoon with a 1 p.m. first pitch.
