Houston Hires Will Davis To Take On the UH Baseball Challenge as Its New Coach — Why the Lamar and LSU Coach Is Eddie Nuñez’s Targeted Pick

The University of Houston is hiring Will Davis of Lamr to be its new baseball coach. UH athletic director Eddie Nuñez lands his targeted choice to bring the Cougars’ baseball program after an eight-year NCAA Tournament drought.

Davis was offered the job and accepted it Monday night, PaperCity is told. PaperCityMag first reported back on May 20 that UH contacted Davis and he was one of the only candidates Nuñez interviewed during the search process.

The 41-year-old Davis led Lamar to the NCAA Regionals for the first time in 16 years this spring. He brings a 289-231 head coaching record to Houston, all in his 10 seasons at Lamar. Davis and Nuñez worked together at LSU where Davis established himself as one of the rising young coaches in the game after his playing career for the Tigers ended.

Now he takes on the UH baseball program, a proud program that needs a boost.

University of Houston baseball has not made the NCAA Tournament since 2018, but it’s a Power 4 job in one of most fertile baseball recruiting areas in the country. With tons of upside. While UH’s Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) commitment to baseball is currently among the lowest in the Big 12, the athletic department’s corporate partnerships are on a major upswing and there is opportunity for a new coach who builds excitement and supporter relationships to help spur more giving to the baseball program.

The Will Davis Hiring Timeline

Lamar will begin play in the College Station Regional on Friday, May 29, opening with a 3 pm game against 12th-ranked Texas A&M. With college baseball’s transfer portal window set to open on Monday, June 1, UH and Davis did not have time to wait to get the word of the hire out. Davis needs to grab any momentum he can to get Houston going.

Davis will be the Cougars’ first new coach in 17 seasons, replacing Todd Whitting, whose long run sputtered out at the end with 12th, 11th and 14th place finishes in the 14 baseball-member Big 12. The transition to the Power 4 has been anything but smooth for a UH baseball program that had been short on resources. Whitting did lead the Cougars to four NCAA Regional appearances in a five season span from 2014 to 2018, including a Super Regional run in which a 48-win Cougars team finished as the No. 11 ranked team in America (in 2014).

Davis has shown an ability to win with less at Lamar — and his recruiting prowess helped the powerhouse LSU program land five straight Top 10 nationally ranked classes during his run as an assistant there. Davis is regarded as something of a catcher guru — a former catcher himself who’s tutored standout backstops.

Now Nuñez is betting that Will Davis is a big catch for Houston.

This is the fifth head coach that Nuñez has hired since being brought on as Houston’s athletic director in August of 2024 The new baseball coach joins Matthew Mitchell (women’s basketball), Ben Williams (women’s soccer), Chrissy Schoonmaker (softball) and just hired women’s tennis coach Valeriya Zeleva as hires in Nuñez’s dramatic makeover of UH’s non-revenue sports.