Andy Stankiewicz disagrees with the premise of the question, that his USC baseball program is ahead of schedule in Year 1 or that it's arrived in any sort of way yet.
"I want to preface by saying, I really feel like we have a ways to go. I want to finish at the top every year -- not middle," Stankiewicz says over the phone Sunday morning.
He's talking a day after finishing the regular season 33-22-1, in fourth place in the Pac-12 (17-13) and entering conference tournament play this week seemingly well-positioned for the Trojans' first NCAA regionals appearance since 2015.
For 25 minutes, he talks about the process of putting this roster together on the fly after being hired last July 3, about focusing on the daily expectations and standards rather than the big picture, and of the buy-in and drive of the players to make this season what it's become.
With regard to the potential of a NCAA regionals berth -- Baseball America has USC projected squarely in the field to start the week -- Stankiewicz doesn't want to look past Tuesday and the Trojans' Pac-12 tourney opener vs. UCLA in Scottsdale, Arizona.
But when it comes to his overall vision for the program -- why he took the job in the first place -- he also wants to be very clear that even delivering the second-best season USC has had in 18 years (behind that 39-win 2015 NCAA tournament team) can only be viewed as a starting point.
The job has still only just begun.
"The vision is to get to Omaha. The vision is to do what coach [Rod] Dedeaux did and do what coach [Mike] Gillespie did and do what a lot of players have done here in USC baseball," Stankiewicz says near the end of that 25-minute call, reiterating his initial point and general purpose here.
That's precisely what has made the USC job so daunting for his predecessors the last decade and a half -- the continued hope from those who care about Trojans baseball that someone might finally bridge the program's illustrious past to the present.
It's hard to find a true parallel to the dramatic dichotomy that is USC baseball in the broader scope of team sports. The Trojans' 12 national championships (11 under Dedeaux from 1948-78 and one with Gillespie in 1998) are not only the most ever but double the total of any other NCAA Division I baseball program, yet USC hasn't truly been a national contender in the sport since its last College World Series appearance in 2001 (with just that one NCAA regionals berth over the last 17 years).
Stankiewicz is the fifth USC baseball coach since Gillespie finished his tenure in 2006. Only one of the previous four, Dan Hubbs (2013-19), has so much as finished a season with a winning record (2014 and 2015) … until Stankiewicz.
So, yes, what this team has accomplished already this spring is significant if for no other reason than there is real hope again for Trojans baseball -- hope that USC hired the right guy this time, and that while there may still be a long way to go on the road back to prominence, at least the program is finally again moving in the right direction.
That much Stankiewicz will acknowledge.
"We talked about earning respect as much as anything else this year, earning the respect of the college baseball community," he said. "And I think that they've done that."
