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Oklahoma State has hired Rob Walton as its pitching coach, Cowboy head coach Josh Holliday announced Monday.

Walton has been the head coach at Oral Roberts for the last nine years and has spent 14 years total at ORU. He was a four-year letterman as a pitcher at OSU from 1983-86.

This is a really special opportunity for me and my family, Walton said. My wife and I went to school there, and it's a chance to come back to our alma mater and help Coach Holliday get the program going in the right direction. Hopefully we can bring it back to prominence.

I've known Josh (Holliday) for a long time. He has a passion for OSU baseball and so do I, and so we're going to team up and do the best job that we can do to put the program back where it needs to be.

In his nine seasons at the helm of ORU, Walton compiled a 365-167 (.686) record and was named the Summit League Coach of the Year five times.

We're really excited to bring someone of Rob's caliber to the program, Holliday said. He possesses the talents and character traits that identify our mission to develop and groom our players in an environment where teaching, discipline, passion, the ability to develop a person in all phases of their life, on the field and off, are the focus, as is the commitment to building a championship team. When this opportunity to bring Rob into our program presented itself, and after sitting and talking with him and his family and sensing the true passion for Oklahoma State, his unique and well-known talents in the game and his desire to team up and pour himself into the kids and help us become great, it was just a tremendous fit.

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OSU baseball: Former ORU coach Rob Walton added to Cowboys coaching staff