USC baseball back thanks to coach who believed in its legacy: Theyve got fight, man

Among the deluge of congratulations that Andy Stankiewicz fielded after his USC baseball team’s long-awaited breakthrough was a text message that said it all.“Just like the good old days,” read the note from Justin Dedeaux, son of legendary Trojans coach Rod Dedeaux.What a glorious time it was.Under the late Dedeaux, USC baseball was a brand on par with any in college or professional sports, winning 11 College World Series titles.The success continued under successor Mike Gillespie, who reached college baseball’s biggest stage four times, winning the title in 1998.Since Gillespie’s departure in 2006, a program that produced Mark McGwire, Randy Johnson and Tom Seaver — not to mention Sparky Anderson, a onetime batboy for the Trojans — has been cloaked in anonymity.

A hodgepodge of forgettable seasons — many under .500 — produced zero buzz.Enter Stankiewicz, an old-school, unpretentious sort who has this team on the verge of being the talk of the town.Starting Friday afternoon, USC (47-16) will play an NCAA Tournament Super Regional against North Carolina (48-11-1) on national television, needing only two wins in the best-of-three series to get back to the College World Series for the first time since 2001.“I can’t tell you how fulfilling it is to see us back and playing a certain way,” said Adam Dedeaux, Rod’s grandson, “and learning how to win games, how to finish games, how to do the little things right.”There’s a symmetry to the Trojans’ success under their most celebrated coaches and Stankiewicz, who in only his fourth season has guided the program to its first Super Regional since 2005.If Dedeaux passed the torch to Gillespie — his onetime left fielder and one of only a handful of people to win a College World Series title as a player and coach — then Gillespie did the same for Stankiewicz.An Inglewood native who was a contemporary of McGwire and Johnson when he manned the infield at Pepperdine, Stankiewicz spent two summe...