More on TU's hire

I got the sense from talking to him that he was thrilled to be getting back into coaching, but he was even happier about coming back to Ohio, where most of his family is. Hill's son, Nate, is the boys basketball coach at Bucyrus High School.

From every account I got, Hill liked his job as athletic director at Shenandoah University.

“It was a great job down here,” Hill said. “But our family's back in Ohio. it's just a great opportunity to get back and do exactly what you want to do.”

Hill had an interesting take on coaching at the Division II level for the first time. He said at the Division III level, you can sell the program and sell yourself to a player, but then because of financial issues, a player might not be able to come.

At TU, Hill is able to offer scholarships.

“Right now, if I can sell the kids on Tiffin University and sell the kids on me, I can attract them to go there,” he said.

When I asked Hill about hiring some of the coaches at Heidelberg when he was athletic director, he was very complimentary of baseball coach Matt Palm.

“Two of the smartest things I've done ... I hired Matt Palm to coach at Heidelberg and Kevin Anderson to coach at Shenandoah,” he said.

Anderson is the Hornets' baseball coach, and his team is ranked No. 20 in Division III. Heidelberg is No. 11.

Hill said he hopes the teams can meet in the national tournament.

As for his own team, Hill sounded ready to get going with recruiting.

“The hard thing right here is jumping into the recruiting process,” he said. “It's key players coming into your program and having players buy into your system.”