In 1976, he accepted the challenge of building, from scratch, a baseball program at Atlanta's DeKalb Community College.

His Eagles were nationally ranked three times in four years and advanced to the 1977 Junior College World Series, where DeKalb placed second.

Morris added two more winning years at DeKalb before moving on to become an assistant coach at Florida State.

Miami has qualified for the NCAA tournament a record 44 consecutive years and made it to Omaha in 11 of Morris' first 15 seasons in Coral Gables.

Morris set an NCAA record for guiding a program to the College World Series in each of his first six years at the University of Miami.