Cincinnati just converted an old golf simulator into a shrine for the parts of baseball half the sport still treats like a museum exhibit, and I am here for every square foot of it.
The Bearcats opened the Cheetah Lab on the first floor of the Richard E. Lindner Center this week, a dedicated indoor space for bunting and baserunning, and the timing could not be cleaner. First official fall practice landed Monday. The unveiling hit Wednesday. The debate is already loud: specialized speed lab or mid-major gimmick with better branding. I know which side I am on.
This is identity made physical. Not a press release. Not a recruiting flyer. A room.
The Bus Ride Built the Blueprint
Assistant coach Tom Winske floated the idea on the ride home from the 2024 NCAA Tournament Tennessee Regional. Head coach Jordan Bischel took the fundraising. The administration gave them the old golf team simulator space just outside the weight room. That sequence matters. Programs do not turn a loss into a laboratory unless the style already works and they refuse to treat it like a temporary phase.
Look at the ledger since Bischel got rolling. Cincinnati led all Power Four programs in bunt hits in each of the last three seasons, including 31 this past year. Three hundred sixty-four stolen bases since the start of 2024. A program-record 134 steals in 2025 at a 90.5 percent clip. Another 121 bags in 2026 at 87.1 percent success, good for fourth among Power Four schools. One hundred three wins across those three seasons, the most productive stretch in program history, with records of 32-25, 33-26, and 38-22. Back-to-back NCAA Tournament berths for the first time ever.
That is not luck. That is a system eating other systems for lunch.
Bischel put it clean in the release: “Our baserunning and bunting approach, led by incredible leadership from Coach [Tom] Winske, has become arguably the single most dynamic and efficient operation in the country. Not only has it tremendously helped our offensive production, but it has set our student-athletes up for increased success at the professional level. We play incredibly fast-paced baseball that creates an electric dynamic for fans. Our consistent focus on this area of the game is unique to college baseball, and the addition of our ‘Cheetah Lab’ is equally unique to player development.”
I read that and nodded hard. Unique is the right word. Most Power conference programs still treat the bunt like a last resort and baserunning like something you yell about in the third inning when the runner freezes. Cincinnati built a curriculum around both and then built a room to keep teaching it when the weather turns.
Winske made the marriage explicit. “We really wanted to develop our bunt game more than it has been,” he said. “It’s a big part of what we do. Base stealing and bunting go hand in hand, and it’s a style of play that we have here at Cincinnati, and it’s been very successful.”
Hand in hand. That is the whole thesis. You do not get 364 steals without the threat of the bunt forcing infielders to cheat. You do not drop 31 bunt hits without defenses already panicking about the runner. The lab is just the next layer of the same engine.
This Is How Mid-Majors Stop Apologizing
I keep hearing the gimmick talk, and I get why it surfaces. College baseball has spent a decade worshipping exit velocity and launch angle. A room with turf baselines and a screen for timing pitcher releases feels almost rebellious. It should. The programs that win March and June are the ones that create chaos the other nine guys cannot practice against in a cage.
Bischel already sees the ceiling moving. “What’s so exciting to me is this type of stuff that we never dreamed was possible,” he said. “We can keep going. We can keep stacking on top of it.”
Stacking. That is the word that sticks. The Bearcats are not finished. They are adding surface area to an advantage they already own. Four fall exhibitions are locked: at Purdue on Sept. 27, Kentucky at Prasco Park on Oct. 4, Dayton and Xavier at home in mid-October. Bischel called those games necessary external data points because the 34-man roster barely fills a full scrimmage. The Cheetah Lab fills the gaps between those dates. Every bunt angle. Every first-step read. Every release-time calculation. No weather delay. No shared field time. Just reps that turn into runs in April.
I watched enough college baseball the last three years to know what happens when a mid-major or a newer Power program finds a real differentiator. Everybody else copies the weight room. Everybody else copies the analytics department. Almost nobody copies the willingness to be annoying on the bases every single night. Cincinnati is daring the rest of the Big 12 and every regional opponent to keep pace with a style that requires actual practice volume, not just better bats.
The freshman class already looks like it can run. The returning core already proved it can. Now they have a dedicated space that turns September and October into a finishing school for the exact skills that got them back to the Tournament twice. I do not care if some scouting directors still roll their eyes at small ball. The scoreboard does not.
Cincinnati turned a golf simulator into a cheetah cage and put a three-year ledger of bunt hits and stolen bases on the wall as proof. The rest of the sport can keep debating gimmicks while the Bearcats keep stacking.
