#23 Cliff Godwin Associate Head Coach - Third Season with the Knights hts A veteran when it comes to success at the highest level of college baseball, associate head coach Cliff Godwin is in charge of the UCF offense as well as the catchers. A na ve of Snow Hill, N.C., he also serves as the recrui ng coordinator for the Knights’ program a er spending two years at LSU. And already Godwin has brought in two recrui ng classes ranked in the top 20, including the 2011 class which was No. 20 in the country by Collegiate Baseball Newspaper.
And Taylor’s freshman season evolved into one of the best by a UCF catcher, as he became the first backstop in school history to earn Freshman All-American honors. He threw out a C-USA best 26 runners and finished with a .335 average and a .981 fielding percentage.
Godwin wasted li le me making his mark with the Knights when he joined the program in the summer of 2008. Working with head coach Terry Rooney and assistant coach Jeff Palumbo, the staff ’s first UCF recrui ng class was ranked as the fourth-best in the country by Collegiate Baseball Newspaper, while Baseball America gave the Black and Gold the No. 10 spot in its top 25. Those rankings for the 2010 class were the highest ever recorded by the UCF baseball program.
The Tigers were paced by Baseball America First American Blake Dean, who ba ed .353 and had 73 RBI. The sophomore was the NCAA Baton Rouge Regional Most Outstanding Player and the SEC Tournament Most Valuable Player. Meanwhile, first baseman Ma Clark, who led the naon with 28 dingers, went in the 12th round of the 2008 MLB Dra .
And with that class suited up in Black and Gold for ‘10, Godwin directed an offense that put up dizzying numbers, as he would go on to earn C-USA Assistant Coach of the Year honors from SEBaseball.com. The Knights’ .343 ba ng average not only set a school record, but was the best by a C-USA program in league history. They smashed the program’s single-season home run mark by sending 78 over the wall, and also broke the UCF record with a .538 slugging percentage.
Familiar with sending student-athletes off to the professional ranks throughout his coaching career, Godwin has witnessed 35 of his players be selected in the MLB Dra since 2005, including Brown and Duffy in the 2010 Dra .
UCF finished with a 33-22 record, and ranked among the naon’s best offensive teams at the conclusion of the regular season. It placed 11th in the na on in ba ng average, 18th in doubles per game (2.56), 19th in slugging and 27th in home runs per game (1.42). If that was not impressive enough, Godwin helped completely turn around Chris Duffy’s career. With a .283 three-year ba ng average and 22 homers, Duffy broke through as a senior in 2010 under Godwin. The ou ielder sha ered the UCF and C-USA records with a .447 average and an .850 slugging percentage en route to receiving na onal a en on all year long. His 21 homers and 81 RBI set the UCF single-season records, as he ranked in the regular-season top-10 in all of Division I in average, homers, RBI, slugging, total bases and OBP. Duffy, a finalist for the Golden Spikes Award, would join senior Shane Brown as members of the Louisville Slugger AllAmerican Teams and the All-C-USA First Team, with the duo serving as the first two teammates in C-USA history to hit at least .400. Brown’s .428 mark was the fourth-highest in the league record books while he entered UCF’s top-10 in almost every sta s cal category. As the seniors pummeled opposing pitching, Godwin also mentored five star ng freshmen in the lineup, including CUSA Freshman of the Year Chris Taladay who hit .352 with 19 doubles and eight homers. Along with Darnell Sweeney (.358) and Ryan Breen (.348), the trio finished the regular season with the three highest ba ng averages of all freshmen in the en re league. Not to be outdone, Ronnie Richardson paced all C-USA freshmen with a .448 OBP and Aus n Johnston was one of the na on’s best with 12 sacrifice bunts. Breen and Taladay went on to be selected as Louisville Slugger Freshman All-Americans in 2010, as Breen joined Beau Taylor as two UCF catchers who earned that status in backto-back-seasons. Overall, the en re Knights offense combined to smash the UCF home run record for the second-straight year with Godwin at the helm. The 2009 squad set the mark with 68 long balls before the 2010 campaign witnessed UCF crush 78 homers. During 2010, Duffy (21), Jonathan Griffin (13) and Brown (10) each hit at least 10, marking just the third me UCF had three Knights bang out 10 home runs or more. In year No. 1 with Godwin at the helm of the aluminum, a total of four student-athletes earned postseason accolades by Conference USA, with Brown and Brandon Romans on the second team, while Taylor and D.J. Hicks were voted onto the all-freshman team. During the year, Brown was named naonal hi er of the week by three different websites by reaching base in 18-straight plate appearances from April 24-28.
Prior to coming to UCF, Godwin helped the LSU offense hit .306 in 2008 with 100 homers and 95 stolen bases. The squad recorded at least 10 runs in a game 20 mes and posted a .509 slugging percentage. Towards the end of the season and including the NCAA Tournament, LSU posted a 23-game winning streak en route to a trip to Omaha and the College World Series.
Godwin was also responsible for developing LSU catcher Micah Gibbs into a 2008 Freshman AllAmerican for the Tigers. Gibbs eventually served as the star ng catcher for the United States Naonal Team that went undefeated and took gold at the 2008 World Championships, and he later was dra ed in the third round of the 2010 MLB Dra . Godwin also mentored a pair of LSU hitters who were selected in the top two rounds of the 2009 dra , as Jared Mitchell was taken in the first round and DJ LeMahieu heard his name called in the second round. Godwin and Rooney built the top ranked recruiting class in the na on in 2007 for LSU, according to Collegiate Baseball magazine. That class featured nine signees selected in that season’s MLB Dra . The duo also spent one season together at Notre Dame before venturing to LSU. During that 2006 campaign, the Figh ng Irish had a .313 team average en route to claiming the Big East Tournament tle and a spot in the NCAA Lexington Regional. First baseman and consensus AllAmerican Craig Cooper sparked ND, earning Big East Player of the Year accolades and was dra ed in the seventh round a er not being selected out of high school. Before heading to South Bend, Godwin served as Vanderbilt’s director of baseball opera ons in 2004-05 and was a volunteer assistant coach at UNC Wilmington in 2003-04. The 2004 Seahawks put the program on the map by winning their first Colonial Athle c Associa on championship and advancing to the NCAA Regional championship game. Godwin received his first taste of coaching with one year as an assistant at Kinston (N.C.) High School in 2003, a year a er he played professionally for two seasons with the Fron er League’s Gateway Grizzlies. A magna cum laude graduate of East Carolina in December 2000, Godwin earned a bachelor of science degree in management informa on systems at ECU. He later received the Pat Draughon Postgraduate Scholarship, as well as his master’s in business administra on from East Carolina in 2002. On the diamond, Godwin was instrumental as the Pirates’ catcher from 1997-01. At ECU, the two- me Academic All-American was a threeyear captain who made 126 starts during his fi-
Team All-
nal three campaigns while playing for legendary coach Keith LeClair. As a senior, Godwin hit .322 with 15 homers and 45 RBI to earn ABCA All-East Region and First Team All-CAA accolades. East Carolina brought home two CAA tournament tles while Godwin was with the team. The Pirates reached the NCAA Tournament as the top regional seed from 1999-01, including a trip to the Super Regionals in 2001. Prior to college, Godwin a ended Greene Central High School where he was a standout in football, basketball and baseball. Godwin was voted the conference’s player of the year in football along with earning all-conference honors in baseball and basketball.
THE GODWIN FILE Born: Feb. 2, 1978, in Snow Hill, N.C. High School: Greene Central High School, Snow Hill, N.C. College Educa on: East Carolina, 2000; bachelor’s degree in management informa on systems master’s degree in business administra on from ECU, 2002 Playing Career: Catcher - East Carolina, 1997-01 Catcher - Gateway Grizzlies (Fron er League), 2001-02 Coaching Career: Assistant coach - Kinston (N.C.) High School, 2003 Volunteer assistant coach - UNC Wilmington, 2003-04 Director of baseball opera ons - Vanderbilt, 2004-05 Assistant coach - Notre Dame, 2006 Assistant coach - LSU, 2007-08 Assistant coach - UCF, 2008-09 Associate head coach - UCF, 2009-Present
Professional Players Coached by Godwin 2005 Mike Baxter Warner Jones Tony Mansolino Antoan Richardson Tim Preston 2006 Chris Hatcher Craig Cooper John Raynor Brian Hernandez Greg Lopez Ma Poulk Jonathan Ba s Mike Marbry 2007 Dominic De La Osa Kenny Smith Jonathan White Zac Booker 2008 Ma Clark Mike Hollander Bre Lilley Mark Carver Alex Feinberg 2009 Jared Mitchell DJ LeMahieu Ryan Schimpf Sean Ochinko Jeremy Barnes Chad Hartman 2010 Micah Gibbs Leon Landry Blake Dean Shane Brown Chris Duffy Johnny Dishon Chad Jones
DraŌed Fourth Round 17th Round 26th Round 35th Round Free Agent DraŌed Fi h Round Seventh Round Ninth Round 19th Round 33rd Round 41st Round 49th Round Free Agent DraŌed 10th Round 20th Round 24th Round Free Agent DraŌed 12th Round 20th Round 29th Round 33rd Round 43rd Round DraŌed First Round (23rd Pick) Second Round (79th Pick) Fi h Round 11th Round 11th Round 43rd Round DraŌed Third Round Third Round Eighth Round 23rd Round 26th Round 42nd Round 50th Round
School Vanderbilt Vanderbilt Vanderbilt Vanderbilt UNC Wilmington School UNC Wilmington Notre Dame UNC Wilmington Vanderbilt Notre Dame UNC Wilmington UNC Wilmington UNC Wilmington School Vanderbilt UNC Wilmington Vanderbilt UNC Wilmington School LSU LSU Notre Dame UNC Wilmington Vanderbilt School LSU LSU LSU LSU Notre Dame UCF School LSU LSU LSU UCF UCF LSU LSU
2011 UCF Baseball Yearbook
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