Steve Owens has been a college baseball head coach for 28 seasons and he’s never had a losing record. He probably could’ve remained at Bryant University, the Rhode Island school he built into a perennial power, for the remainder of his coaching days.

But there was something about the Rutgers job that appealed to him.

“A good friend of mine told me it’s okay to look back — just don’t stare too long. That’s good advice,’’ Owens said. “I’ve loved everywhere I’ve been. This job attracted me because it’s an area where I know a lot of people, where I’ve done a lot of (recruiting) for a long time, and also can get in a car and find a good deal of our players (in surrounding states). And this was an opportunity to play in a great conference, an opportunity to be able to have a great season and maybe not win your tournament but still be able to potentially get (an NCAA) bid. We just won 40 games (at Bryant) last year. We won our first two games of our (conference) tournament and then we lost two one-run games and we’re home. So if we can put up a good body of work throughout the entire year, I’d love to be evaluated on that by an NCAA selection committee instead of one tournament.’’

NCAA Tournament? Considering Rutgers has yet to qualify for a Big Ten Tournament since joining the conference five years ago, it may be strange to hear a coach mention the NCAA Tournament when talking big-picture.

But Owens, a central New York native whose career record (914-483-3) ranks him among the top-30 active head coaches nationally in wins, has appeared in six NCAA Tournaments in his nearly three-decade career. And he expects to be there again.

“This one is going to be challenging because we’re starting at the bottom of the Big Ten,’’ Owens said. “We haven’t been the conference tournament once yet, and it’s a tough recruiting state. So we have some hurdles to get over, but I think we have good players right now. I’ve enjoyed talking to them. I think we’re going to put our stamp on it. They’re going to be impressed with our coaching staff and how hard everybody is going work for them. We’re just going to coach them as hard as we can right now, and then work our tails off on the recruiting trail and try to win as many battles as we can. We’re going to get guys. It might take a while but we’ll get them.’’

Owens, whose Bryant teams won 30 or more games in seven of his nine seasons and won 40-plus games four times, sat down with NJ Advance Media on Tuesday for his first interview since being tapped by Athletics Director Pat Hobbs as the 13th coach in Rutgers’ 149-year history on June 25:

Q: I found it interesting, looking at your resume, that you had a lot of success winning at the Division III level (at Cortland) and at a pair of lower-level Division I schools. Did that teach you a different mentality or maybe grow you as a coach as opposed to having some more resources at a place like this?

Owens: “What you learn is all the things that you have to do to run your program. It’s not just recruit, develop and coach the kids — you have to do everything. You’re looking after all the travel arrangements, you’re making sure the field is done, you’re doing it all. The players, of course, are bigger, stronger, faster in this conference — not all of them, but they’re supposed to be. But the game is the same. I don’t think you learn anything different playing at a different level. We have to recruit and develop a different caliber of player than what I did at Division III. I’ve learned a lot at every place I’ve been. You have to learn the school, how to sell it, how it works, how to operate, how to market, how to get to the players you need to get to, how to get the alumni behind you, to get the boosters behind you. There’s a lot of things to learn. The players are the easiest to learn at every place you go, once they realize that you’re there to help them get better. I want to set the tone of hard work, discipline, intensity, having fun and doing all those things at the same time.’’

Q: From a recruiting standpoint does it start in New Jersey and branch out from there? I know you have Northeast roots.

Owens: “I do. When I went to Bryant from La Moyne, I knew no one up in New England and we did pretty good up there. It’s very competitive (recruiting-wise) because there’s some pretty good teams up there. There’s a lot of schools up there, just like there’s a lot of schools here. But we should be a big dog in New Jersey. Of course it should start in New Jersey but that doesn’t mean that three or four of your best players might not come from someplace else. New Jersey is obviously a hotbed of talent not just in baseball but in every sport. There are a lot of good ones because there are a million kids.

“So, yes, we want to be a choice for the frontline player in New Jersey. We have to go after those kids, and we have to earn that, and the kids have to want to be here. So there’s a lot to that. We don’t want to settle for a good player. We want great players. We want to be in the mix with all the great players. We’re not going to get them all. They’re going to all over the country just like they do in every sport. Maybe some will come back to us, and if we can get this program going in the direction that I hope we can get it going, then I think we can become a strong choice for those kids to stay here instead of going away in the first place.

“I don’t think we have to be all New Jersey. That’s not the goal. The goal is to get the best players. I have a bigger network than just New Jersey to recruit players from. I can go from Buffalo to Canada to Albany and in all the New England states there’s a high population of good players there too. We just want to get our share of top-tier players and continue to develop them. The kids who are coming out of high school throwing 95 miles-per-hour, those are really hard to get to show up on campus because they’re committing really early or they’re getting drafted. We have to use the same formula that I’ve always used, and that’s identifying the kid who you think is going to mature and get to that high level, who might not quite be there coming out of high school.

“It’s easy to pick the best player in the state. How about the kid who is 6-3 and throwing 85 or 86 and then two years from now he’s throwing 95 and he’s a third rounder? That’s who you’ve gotta get, and you’ve gotta have five of those guys to win. That doesn’t mean he’s a second-tier player. I just means he’s not quite the polished kid.

“Go look at the Little League World Series and the biggest kid hits the most home runs and then the little skinny kid whose playing in the outfield ends up developing into the starting shortstop while the other guy stops growing. He was just a little ahead at that time. So there’s a lot of different formulas for getting kids, but I think you have to go after the top kids 100 percent. Because you’re going to get some. If you don’t go after them, you have no chance.

“The most important criteria for me is that they want to be here. We want the best kid that we can evaluate but we want them to be here. We don’t want them to beg them, or have them think they’re settling for us.’’

Q: From a recruiting perspective, there have been some decommitments — players who committed to the previous staff — that we’ve seen on social media. Do you get concerned with that, do you try to bring in your own recruits, or is there a balance of keeping those kids and bringing in your own?

Owens: “We’re pretty much shoestring’d a little bit with numbers and (scholarship) money because of where we’re at roster-wise. I have to see how that all plays out. There will be some pieces from the 2020 class that still needs to be added. It’s a big year (recruiting-wise). At this point I think we’ve retained three or four of the players who were recruited before, which is good. And then we have to evaluate our own talent.

“What we know we need to do is coach the guys we have. That’s my first responsibility. I’m going to coach these guys and we’re going to try to make them as good as we can. And change the culture into what we’d like it to be. The culture might already be great; I hope it is. A lot of players have reached out and I’ve been excited by what I’ve heard from them. These guys are my players now and so I’m going to coach them as best as I can. And then each year we’ll start adding in more and more of our own recruited players. This transition will be a little rocky at times probably. But I’m excited about it.’’

Q: It doesn’t sound like you’re prepared to have a losing season. Twenty-eight winning seasons in a row is really impressive but you’re coming to a place that, quite frankly, hasn’t had that kind of success of late.

Owens: “I don’t know the last time that there was a winning season. We have a very challenging schedule. They were playing in the Big East before and now they’re in the Big Ten, and that’s a different animal. It’s more difficult and more challenging. I haven’t had a losing season. I don’t know how that’s happened. But if we had to lose in order to get to a (NCAA) regional two years from now, I’ll accept that. I just care about getting better. I can’t look into a crystal ball to know how many wins and losses we’re going to have. I just know we’re going to get better.’’

Q: It seems like the cupboard is pretty full just from the standpoint that you have seven players with starting experience in the lineup and all three weekend starters coming back. Do you think this is a program built to win?

Owens: “I do. I think, without having laid eyes on the players, there are some talented athletes. Harry Rutkowski is a Cape Cod all-star and (Richie) Schiekofer is tearing it up in the Northwoods League. There are some talented athletes. Kevin Welch just went up to the New England League and he’s hitting .450 and playing great. We have a drafted catcher coming in, another one (Pete Serruto) returning as a sophomore. Tommy Genuario and Tevin Murray were weekend starters, and (Chris) Brito I saw in high school (at Perth Amboy) I saw Brito in high school. There’s some lineage with his father (Tilson) playing in the big leagues. I’ve seen some of the freshmen in the weight room and they look physically like you’re supposed to look. So I think there’s some good pieces, for sure, to get started.

“This isn’t broken. I think there’s a lot of good ballplayers here, and we’re just excited to have the opportunity to work with them. In the fall, we’re not going to jump in and make a bazillion changes. We want to watch them, see who does what. See what their motors are like, see who handles success and failure, who are the leaders, who elevates in the big situations, who shrinks. We have to learn a lot by watching them. I want to watch before I start making some changes, whether it’s mechanical or whatever. Then I’ll sit down with our players and coaches and say, ‘Ok, this is what we have and this is how we’re going to have to try to win this year. This is a strength and we don’t have this so we’re going to have to play with this style.’ If you’re going to win every year — and if you’re not at a place where you can recruit the absolute top kids at every position every year — then you have to learn how to adjust to what your strengths are.’’

Q: At Bryant your offensive numbers were video-game like, but can that style of play translate to Rutgers?

Owens: “We had 500 strikeouts, too.’’

Q: Can you win that way? Rutgers is traditionally small-ball, pitching, fundamentally sound defense, but rarely have we seen Rutgers teams just try to just out-slug you.

Owens: “I would like to play pretty offensive. I’ve had teams that stole 119 bases, I’ve had teams that stole 30 bases. Last year we had 81 home runs, and I’ve had teams that have had a lot less than that. Whatever we can we’re going to do, and each player is different. When I sit down with kids, for one I might say, ‘I don’t want the ball in the air; I want it on the ground, I want you working counts. I don’t care about your batting average; I care about your on-base percentage.’ But for another I might say, ‘I only care about how many RBI you have. Strikeout and do what you do, but just focus on knocking in runs.’ Once we know what they do well, we’re going to look to maximize that.

“But while we’re doing that we’re still trying to get them better at bunting or hitting with two strikes, moving runners over and understanding that a ground ball with a runner on third in the middle of the field with the infield back is an RBI for your team while a strikeout is not. Going first to third is how you win college baseball games, not necessarily stealing bases and potentially giving outs on the bases. Reading balls in the dirt and getting those key bags at points in the game when people are in plus counts and throwing breaking balls, that’s how you win games. So we’re going to keep working on those things.

“Guys are going to pitch the way they pitch and if we can make them better with strategy, or with mechanics and arm slot, then we’ll try to make some changes. But we’re never going to coach somebody to feel unnatural and not use what we recruited them for in the first place. We’re not going to put guys in a mold, we’re not going to have them pitch one way, we’re not going to have them hit one way. I like power arms. I like throwing fastballs. We like physical, offensive players. I will sacrifice that at certain spots. But in this conference you need speed in the middle of the field. So ideally we’ll have our corner guys be boppers and solid defenders, and we’d like our middle guys to be lightning athletic and really defensive. And we’d like a mix of righty and lefty power pitchers.’’

Q: What’s your vision from a facilities standpoint?

Owens: “Well, we’re going to get new turf and we’re going to try to move the fences in. It’s 417 to centerfield. I know it reads 405. But it’s 417. The corners and the alleys are fine. But maybe we can move (the fences) in and make it where it’s more fun so we can hit some balls over the fence in centerfield, not just to the corners of the field. I like that style, and people who watch the games like it, so why not take advantage of that right now?

“We’re going to turf in the fenced in area and put a triple bullpen over there. The game mound will be turf. So we’ll be able to play no matter what going forward. My vision is to get rid of the batting cages and everything that’s behind the first-base dugout, clean it all up. I would like the (outdoor) cages moved over by the Fred Hill (indoor practice facility). So now we’d have our indoor, our cages and our bullpen and I’m going to put the home dugout on the third-base side because I like coaching on the third-base side and it’s a closer walk to our facilities.

“Those are immediate changes. I think the changes i have in my vision are lights to play night games, especially Friday night games in our conference from the middle of April on. A Friday night game against Indiana or Michigan can be awesome. It also gives us an ability to extend the day. If it’s raining, ‘Okay, we’ll wait and play. It gives us an ability to rent out the field and practice at night if we want to.

“And then the culmination of the plan, which I’m hoping we can get down down the line, is to have a nice stadium. Bleachers, a press box. It doesn’t have to be the Taj Mahal. A very nice, clean, Big Ten field. Those aren’t unrealistic goals. I just know that in the conference that we play in those are important things so that’s an aspiration to work towards and hopefully try to get people to understand how important those steps are.’’

Q: What was the best advice that Todd Frazier gave you? I know you talked to him during the interview process.

Owens: “I talked to (former Rutgers star pitcher) Bobby (Brownlie), too. Both of those guys, their enthusiasm for the era they played in and the pride that they have, they told me: ‘We all wanted to be there. We have get it back to that level where the best kids in this state want to be there at Rutgers.’ That was a big point, and I think to be a good program you always have to take care of the home area. That’s really important especially at a state university. So that was a very consistent theme from those guys. They want us to get it going again so the Jersey guys can stay home again.’’

“But you have to get it going for them to want to stay home. So right now it’s about how hard we work with what we have, and then growing the program with all these facilities we want to get built. I think there’s a lot of steps to get to for all the Jersey players we want to want to be here.’’

Keith Sargeant may be reached at ksargeant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @KSargeantNJ. Find NJ.com Rutgers Football on Facebook.