Brian Guiliana has guided NJIT baseball with a steady hand since being named head coach ahead of the 2013 season.
He joined the NJIT coaching staff an assistant coach in 2010-11, filling that role for two seasons until being named to succeed Mike Cole as head coach in the summer of 2012.
His seasons on the Highlander coaching staff have included the program’s most successful seasons since it began Division I competition in 2007.
In 2011, his first year as an assistant coach, the team reached 20 wins for the first time at the Division I level. The following year’s team eclipsed that mark in a 25-27 overall finish that included a 16-12 record in the old Great West Conference, which was good for a second-place tie in the regular season.
In 2014, Guiliana’s second season as head coach, NJIT reached 20 wins for a third consecutive season and one of the wins came over Central Arkansas, a program that had won 42 games the previous year and reached the NCAA Regional Final at Mississippi State
In 2015, the Highlanders secured a winning season for the first time at the NCAA Division I level, with a 24-23-1 overall record. NJIT posted a 7-0-1 record from March 27 through April 4, while also splitting eight and sweeping four doubleheaders over the course of the season.
The 2016 Highlanders reached 17 wins, including its first all-time victory over an ASUN Conference opponent, USC Upstate on April 1. NJIT took two-out-of-three games from the Spartans, finishing with a 2-18 mark in the league, in its first season as a member of the ASUN.
In 2017, sophomore
Michael Anastasia, an ASUN All-Conference second-team honoree, led the league with a .373 batting average and .463 on-base percentage. Freshman
Matthew Cocciadiferro was selected to the ASUN All-Freshmen team while senior
Cody Kramer earned 2017 ASUN Baseball Scholar Athlete of the Year while teammates
Jesse Uttendorfer and Anastasia were named to the ASUN All-Academic team.
Mark Leiter, Jr., who completed his four-year college playing career at NJIT in May 2013, was called up to the Philadelphia Phillies from the Phillies Class AAA team the Lehigh Valley (PA) Iron Pigs on April 18, 2017. He made his major league debut against the Dodgers on April 29, 2017, pitching a 1-2-3 seventh inning.
Coach Guiliana has coached three players with the Highlanders who are professional baseball players, including two taken in the last three Major League Baseball first-year player drafts (Mark Leiter, Jr., Phillies, 2013 and Ed Charlton, Reds, 2015).
Prior to joining the staff at NJIT in the fall of 2010, Guiliana was well known on the amateur baseball scene in New Jersey as a scout for the then-Florida Marlins, beginning in January 2006. In that role, he covered the entire state of New Jersey and assisted with the rest of the Northeast. As a scout, Guiliana fostered and maintained strong working relationships with high school and college coaches from throughout the state.
The resident of Rockaway, NJ, previously coached and gave private instruction since 1996 and was also active in summer baseball, organizing and managing teams in tournaments throughout the region and had players selected in the annual major league draft.
He is a graduate of The George Washington University in Washington, DC, where he was the recipient of both an academic and an athletic scholarship and was a captain of the GW baseball team, which he led in home runs as a senior.
Brian and his wife Sarah reside in Rockaway, NJ, with their daughters Angelina and Gianna.
Updated June 2017
