Joe Hughes - Baseball Coach - Texas Tech Red Raiders

Joe Hughes

Title:
Director of Operations
Email Address:
joseph.hughes@ttu.edu

Joe Hughes enters his 11th season as the director of baseball operations at Texas Tech in 2023. Hughes was named director of operations with the Red Raiders on July 17, 2012.

Hughes is responsible for the baseball program’s day-to-day operations and oversees every Tech baseball student-athletes’ needs. He manages team travel, scheduling and the program’s team budget. Hughes also oversees facility needs for the home of Red Raider baseball, Dan Law Field at Rip Griffin Park.

In addition, Hughes serves as fall, winter and summer camp director for Red Raider baseball and works as the baseball team liaison with every area and department throughout the Texas Tech athletics department.

Hughes, who also handles on-campus recruiting duties, has been instrumental with Tech’s rise in recruiting on the national level as the Red Raiders have owned 11-straight Top 25 recruiting classes, including three of the highest-ranked recruiting classes in school history (2014, 2015, 2018). The 2018 class was the best in school history, a group that ranked as high as No. 6 by Perfect Game. Most recently, Texas Tech earned a No. 8 ranking by Perfect Game for its 2023 class. In addition to it being the eighth-best ranking in the nation, it was the No. 1 ranking among all Big 12 teams and No. 1 among all teams in the state of Texas.

Hughes has played a key role for a program that has been to the College World Series four times in the last eight contested seasons. Tech is one of six schools in the nation to advance to the College World Series four times since 2014, including consecutive trips in 2018 and 2019 for the first time in school history. Tadlock put his teams in a position to host five consecutive regionals, making Texas Tech the only school in the country to accomplish the feat from 2016-2021, and has advanced to NCAA postseason play for the last six consecutive seasons overall (2016-22).

TEXAS TECH (2013-2022 SEASONS)
The 2022 Red Raiders continued what it had been doing since 2016, competing in the NCAA Tournament, but it was new territory as the previous five regionals were hosted in Lubbock and this edition sent Texas Tech on the road. Tadlock’s team advanced to a Regional Final for the sixth-straight year, with its run ending there in 2022 to CWS participant Notre Dame. Once the season came to a close, Texas Tech finished inside the Top 25 of all six national polls in the end-of-season rankings, extending a steak that also started in 2016.

Tech’s 2021 season was one that saw a squad rally together and fight through a slow start and a season that plagued them with injuries. The Red Raiders won 14 in a row after its opening series. Tech finished 39-17, including 27 wins in the friendly confines of Rip Griffin Park. Tadlock’s team was rewarded with a No. 8 national seed in the NCAA tournament and hosted a regional for the fifth-straight year and qualified to host a Super Regional for the third time in the last five completed seasons. Tech’s loss to Stanford marked the first time the Red Raiders did not advance out of the Super Regional, having been 4-0 in such series previously.

The Red Raiders were poised for yet another run to Omaha in 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic cut the season short in the middle of March. Tech started strong out of the gates and earned the program’s first No. 1 ranking since 1997 before finishing with a 16-3 record.

Tech posted a No. 4 final ranking to match its best finish in school history after the 2019 season, and made its deepest run into College World Series. The squad earned nine All-America accolades, tallied three Freshman All-America awards, 11 All-Big 12 honors and had seven players drafted in the 2019 Major League Baseball Draft.

The Red Raiders returned to Omaha for the third time in 2018, as Tech finished 45-20 overall and 15-9 in Big 12 play, earning its third straight NCAA National Seed ranking at No. 9. The Red Raiders closed 2018 ranked as high as No. 5 in the nation and had a school-record 11 players selected in the 2018 MLB Draft.

In 2017, Tech captured its second-straight Big 12 championship and No. 5 National Seed for the NCAA Tournament after putting together a 45-17 overall record and 16-8 clip in conference play. The Red Raiders earned another top-10 finish in the polls while wrapping the year with 13-straight sellout crowds at Dan Law Field at Rip Griffin Park.

The 2016 Red Raiders earned their second trip to the College World series in three years. Hughes and the Red Raiders put together their second 45+ win season in three years at 47-20, the third-most wins in school history. Tech tallied its first Big 12 Championship in the Tadlock era behind a 19-5 conference record, which ranks second among Big 12 victories in school history. In front of the largest crowds in Dan Law Field at Rip Griffin Park history, Tech claimed the Lubbock Regional and Lubbock Super Regional titles and punched its ticket to the College World Series. In Omaha, the 2016 Red Raiders earned their first-ever CWS win in school history after a thrilling 3-2 victory over No. 1 Florida. Tech ended the season at No. 4 in the final poll, marking the highest finish in program history.

The Red Raiders followed with a 31-24 campaign in 2015, marking the first time the Red Raiders had compiled consecutive 30-win seasons since doing so over a 14-year stretch from 1993-2006.

Over the first two seasons of the Tadlock era, the Red Raiders completed the biggest turnaround in school history and the second biggest turnaround in Big 12 history, going from 26 wins in 2013 to 45 wins in 2014. The season culminated with Texas Tech’s first trip to the College World Series in Omaha. The 2014 season marked the program’s sixth 40-win regular season, at the time, and it was the most conference wins by the Red Raiders in a decade. Tech won their first NCAA Regional (Coral Gables) and captured the NCAA Lubbock Super Regional to advanced to its first College World Series in school history.

Playing Career
A former college baseball player at Oklahoma (2006-07), Hughes joined the Red Raiders coaching staff after a year as assistant director of event management at Oklahoma (2011-2012). Hughes served as a student assistant coach with the Oklahoma baseball program in the fall of 2007 and following his post-graduate studies became a graduate assistant in the OU athletics department in January 2011.

Hughes’ relationship with Texas Tech head coach Tim Tadlock dates back to the beginning of his collegiate playing career at Grayson County College (2004-05) when Tadlock served as the head coach of the junior-college program in Denison, Texas.

Following his junior-college career, Hughes turned down numerous NCAA Division I scholarship offers to reunite with Tadlock at Oklahoma where he was a two-year starter for the Sooners while helping lead the Sooners to the 2006 Norman Regional championship and to an NCAA Super Regional appearance. In fact, Hughes was a key member of the Sooners offense that led the Big 12 in hitting (.323) in 2006.

Following his senior season, Hughes signed a free agent contract with the Kansas City Royals where he made 16 appearances during the 2007 season with Idaho Falls in the Pioneer League. Hughes’ playing career came to an end following 2008 spring training due to an arm injury.

Hughes played the outfield and pitched for the Sooners. He received several honors during his Oklahoma career, including All-Big 12 honorable mention, Academic All-Big 12 first team and Big 12 All-Tournament Team as a senior, and he was named Big 12 Player of the Week during the second week of the season in 2006.

Personal
Hughes graduated from Oklahoma in 2008 with a degree in human relations. He earned his master’s degree in 2010 with a degree in adult and higher education with an emphasis in intercollegiate athletics administration. Hughes is originally from Plano, Texas, where he played high school baseball at Plano East Senior High School.

Hughes was born in Oceanside, Calif., on Oct. 4, 1984. He is married to his wife, Amy, and they have three daughters.