MAGNOLIA, Ark. – Southern Arkansas University head baseball coach Justin Pettigrew has announced that Brandon Stover has been hired as an assistant coach and will join the Mulerider baseball program as the hitting coach and recruiting coordinator.
 
Stover comes to SAU with a wealth of coaching experience under his belt at all levels of NCAA baseball.
 
A majority of his coaching acumen came at his alma mater, Abilene Christian University (Abilene, Texas), where he was an integral part of building the Wildcats' baseball program into a perennial national power among the Division II ranks, and helped transition ACU to Division I in 2014.
 
This past year, Stover was an assistant coach at Hardin-Simmons University (Abilene, Texas) where he coached one All-American Southwest Conference (ASC) First-Team selection with a total of five offensive players earning all-conference honors under his guide.
 
Prior to his coaching career, Stover was a four-year player at ACU from 1999-2002. Each year of his playing career, the Wildcats won over 40 games, and in Stover's final three seasons, ACU captured Lone Star Conference (LSC) division and tournament championships.
 
As the Wildcats' everyday first baseman in 2002, Stover became just the fifth Wildcat in school history to be named all-America, earning third team honors by ABCA/Rawlings after leading ACU to 45 wins and its third straight LSC title.
 
The MVP of both the LSC South Division and the LSC Post-Season Tournament as a senior, Stover hit .415 with 10 home runs and 55 RBI during his all-America campaign. He finished his career with a .354 career batting average (159 for 449) with 15 home runs and 94 RBI. He also clubbed 31 doubles and accumulated 247 total bases.
 
Stover then remained at ACU as a graduate assistant coach in 2003 and helped lead the Wildcats to the DII World Series that year. The following year, Stover began a 13-year run as a full-time assistant, holding titles of hitting and infield coach, recruiting coordinator and ultimately associate head coach prior to the 2015 season.
 
In terms of Wildcat player accolades over his tenure at ACU, Stover helped produce more than three dozen all-conference honorees in addition to having three players named league MVP with two more selected as the conference freshman of the year.
 
All-told, Stover's time at ACU saw 11 seasons with 40 or more wins, which included a school-record 50-win campaign in 2010. Additionally, Stover helped lead the Wildcats to five LSC Championships with three coming as a player and two as a coach.
 
In addition to his collegiate coaching at ACU, Stover spent time coaching summer league baseball and in the summer of 2007, Stover led the Derby (Kan.) Twins to the team's first Jayhawk League championship and a third-place finish at the National Baseball Congress World Series in Wichita, Kan. The Twins finished the regular season with a 36-14 record.
 
The previous summer (2006), Stover was named Head Coach of the year at the NBC World Series in Wichita, Kan. Stover led the underdog Twins to a 7-2 record in the World Series before they finally lost to the Santa Barbara (Calif.) Forresters, 9-8, in the championship game at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium.
 
A native of Abilene, Stover graduated from Abilene Cooper High School in 1998 after a stellar two-sport career. As a senior at Cooper HS in 1998, he hit .459 with three home runs and 26 RBI and picked up two wins on the mound. He was all-District 4-5A in both 1997 and 1998 and team MVP in 1998. He also quarterbacked the 1997 Cooper football team to its first outright District 4-5A championship since 1979, with the team falling in the Regional Finals to the eventual 5A state champion.
 
Stover graduated from ACU in 2003 with a BS in Interdisciplinary Studies with a Minor in Business. He is currently working on his master's degree from Arkansas State University.
 
He and his wife, Kate, were married in June 2003 and have two children, Eydie (8) and Gavin (5).