Nov. 21, 2025 SHARE: From the outside looking in, expectations for the HCU baseball program in Head Coach Clay VanderLaan’s first season at the helm were low. The Huskies were picked to finish 10th in the 11-team league in the 2025 Southland Conference (SLC) Preseason Baseball Poll but finished the year at the Austin Regional of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament as the league’s automatic bid recipient and the lone team from the conference in the field of 64. VanderLaan took over as the head coach following three years as an assistant coach for the Huskies. While he was a consistent presence for the program, he began his inaugural year as head coach with a new coaching staff and just seven returning players on a 40-man roster. “The biggest thing for year one, you know, you always want to get a three- to five-year plan,” said VanderLaan. “I think, for us, the biggest thing was just establishing the culture and the expectations we have. I’m not saying anything was good or bad about the old standard or the way things were run but you have to put your own twist on your own program. So, we set our standard and expectations and set out to get the type of guys into the program who would adhere to that. The wins, whenever they may come, will come.” “Our coaching staff did a phenomenal job recruiting and brought in the exact right type of guys. They had talent but were the type of people we wanted in our program.” Affectionately known to many of his players as “Coach Vandy,” the head man and his staff assembled their roster with 33 newcomers with their first two signed recruits coming in late June of 2024 and concluding with a January 8 addition to get to 40. That group of newcomers was comprised of 17 junior college transfers, 13 four-year college transfers and three high school signees. “In the fall, I knew we were going to have a chance to be successful,” VanderLaan added. “But sometimes you get so focused in on your own team that at some point you think you’re the best team in the country and then other days you’re convinced you’re the worst team in the country. As we got toward our fall world series, I started seeing the strike-throwing ability from our pitchers and we played clean defense, which I think were reasons why we were successful in the spring.” HCU [hosted] the championship series at Husky Field, the first time the campus had ever hosted an SLC Baseball Championship. The Huskies opened the year with four games at home against Central Michigan, dropping the season-opener, 6-0, before rattling off three straight wins and outscoring the Chippewas 29-9 over that final trio of games. VanderLaan’s squad then split a pair of games on a frigid weekend in Monroe, La. against University of Louisiana Monroe before dropping a mid-week matchup against a University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) team that would go on to win the Austin Regional and become one of the final 16 teams left in the NCAA Tournament. Southland Conference play began the following weekend in San Antonio against University of the Incarnate Word (UIW). For the first time in program history, the Huskies opened conference play with a series sweep, plating 33 runs against the Cardinals. Senior Parker Edwards, HCU’s Friday night starter for the season, who also regularly served as the team’s designated hitter, earned Southland Conference “Hitter of the Week” honors after batting .333 with three home runs and eight runs batted in against UIW. The next weekend, HCU kept the winning going with two home wins out of three games against the McNeese Cowboys. The 5-1 start to the SLC schedule was the best start in the conference in program history. Edwards, meanwhile, picked up a repeat SLC “Hitter of the Week” award after hitting .417 with two home runs, two doubles, five RBIs and five runs scored. Over the ensuing weeks, the Huskies continued rolling up wins and winning series. HCU split a four-game set against crosstown rival Rice before winning two of three on the road at UT Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), sweeping a three-game series at home over Stephen F. Austin, taking two of three at Nicholls and winning two at home against Northwestern State (NSU). At the end of that series against NSU, HCU owned an overall record of 22-12 with a 14-4 mark against SLC opponents and the Huskies were tied atop the league standings. The Huskies’ fortunes took a turn at that point, however, after a loss in the final game of that series against NSU started a seven-game losing streak and a stretch of games during which HCU posted just a 5-12 record to close out the regular season. The Huskies dropped to sixth in the league standings and the corresponding sixth seed in the SLC Tournament. “One of the first meetings we had with the guys, we told them that every year there is going to be a part of the season where you stink,” VanderLaan shared. “It’s a hard game. It’s a long season. It’s inevitable. I knew when we started off pretty hot that our rough patch was going to come later in the year. Our guys were prepared for it. There was no panic when we had our first bad series of the year.” The format of the SLC Tournament splits the field of eight into a pair of regional sites hosted by the top two seeds. The Huskies headed south to Edinburg for bracket play hosted by UTRGV and an opening game against a No. 3 seed Lamar program that swept the Huskies on the final weekend of the regular season. What transpired from there was an impressive run by the Huskies. Coach Vandy’s boys rattled off three straight wins to claim the bracket title with a 6-3 win over Lamar and two wins over the host Vaqueros, 9-6 and 4-2, while trailing for a total of just two full innings across the three games. The stage was set for the Huskies to face the winner of the bracket being played at No. 1 seed Southeastern in Hammond, La. in a best-of-three championship series played at the highest-seeded team’s campus. While the Huskies were pulling off their own upsets in Texas, the New Orleans Privateers, the No. 8 seed in the tournament, were stringing together three wins of their own to advance. That meant HCU got to host the championship series at Husky Field, the first time the campus had ever hosted an SLC Baseball Championship. The Huskies put on a show for the home fans as they jumped on the Privateers early in both games, never trailing and scoring 24 runs across a pair of wins in front of two capacity crowds at Husky Field. The SLC Tournament title came on the 10th anniversary, May 23, of the program’s previous SLC title in 2015 that occurred just down the road at Constellation Field in Sugar Land. “There were two things that were great about getting to play at home,” said VanderLaan. “One is, you get to sleep in your own bed. I love going on the road more than anybody, but it’s a huge advantage when you get to sleep in your own bed. The biggest thing, however, is the eyes it puts on our school. I think, obviously, very highly of this university. I think it is, by no fault of our own, an overlooked place and it shouldn’t be. One of the reasons I like coaching here is that it holds a lot of the personal values that I espouse, and I was just glad we got some more outside eyes on the school.” The HCU community packed out Christian’s Tailgate in Rice Village two days later to watch the NCAA Selection Show and learn the Huskies were heading to Austin with an opening matchup against the Texas Longhorns. Despite losses to both Texas and Kansas State at the regional, the 2025 season could be considered nothing short of an incredible success story. The team finished the year with an overall record of 32-25, marking an improvement of 14 wins from the previous year that tied for the ninth-biggest turnaround in the nation. The Huskies’ 32 wins surpassed the win total for the program during the two previous seasons combined. It was the first time an HCU baseball team reached the 30-win mark since 2013. One of the primary metrics used to rank a team’s season and that plays a key role in choosing at-large bids for the NCAA Tournament is RPI (Ratings Percentage Index), a ranking system that considers wins, losses and strength of schedule. HCU finished the 2025 season with an RPI of 91 among 299 NCAA Division I teams, highest among all four of the D1 programs in Houston. While Coach Vandy certainly enjoyed the ride, he’s looking ahead and building the program and taking the Huskies to greater heights. “Our whole theme for this year is, ‘We weren’t a fluke, but we haven’t made it yet.’ We showed people that we can win here. We try not to live too much in the past. In one of our early meetings with this year’s team we said, ‘Alright, this is the last time we’re talking about last year.’ It was great, and I want to do it again because it was a lot of fun, but last year has no bearing on this year.” It was the first time an HCU baseball team reached the 30-win mark since 2013. See our Complete Gallery HCU Celebrates NCCA Tournament Selection at Christian’s Tailgate Press Conference from Game 3 Regionals HCU vs K-State
