BATON ROUGE — The LSU baseball team engaged in 2007 Media Day activities Tuesday as the Tigers continue to prepare for Friday’s season opener at 7 p.m. versus. Saint Mary’s (Calif.) in Alex Box Stadium.
Following are quotes head coach Paul Mainieri, hitting coach Cliff Godwin and pitching coach Terry Rooney:
HEAD COACH PAUL MAINIERI
Opening Statement
“I can not even begin to tell you how excited I am to be here today because this morning I got a text message from my daughter at Notre Dame. All it said was minus-six degrees, minus-30 wind chill factor and two-feet of snow. We would be two weeks away from the opener in South Bend, and that is what we would be looking at outside. I look out these windows and I see the sun shining, beautiful blue skies and a beautiful field. It’s baseball time and softball time. I’m excited for a lot of reasons. That is just one of them.
“It seems like just yesterday, I stood at this podium and addressed you all and talked about how honored I was to become the new baseball coach at LSU. This is, without a doubt, the only place that I would have left Notre Dame for. Notre Dame was wonderful place for 12 years, and I enjoyed every second of it. I felt very fortunate to be the coach there. Then Skip (Bertman) called about this school. I can’t even begin to describe the emotions that I had because I always looked at the state of Louisiana and LSU as being my home. Karen and I met here. Our good friends live here in this state. To be able to come back here as the LSU baseball coach was really a dream come true. I’ve never used the term dream job before I came to LSU. Somehow in someway back in my deep consciousness I could be the coach at LSU. Here it is. Dreams come true.”
“A lot has happened in seven months. I told Skip and (LSU associate AD) Mark Ewing the other day, I think you ought to get your calculators fixed. You guys tell me we have 6,000 season ticket holds and I swear to you I’ve met 10,000 of them out there this fall. People have told me everywhere I go that they have been season ticket holders for 15 years. Thirty to forty people everywhere I go are telling me that. The enthusiasm, the energy and the concern for the baseball program here is why I came here. I always look at LSU and the SEC as the big leagues of college baseball. Since I have never had any desire to go back and work in professional baseball, I never aspired to be a Major League manager, a farm director or a general manager. All I wanted to do was be a college baseball coach, and to me LSU represents the very best in college baseball as does the SEC. You can’t have this media coverage, this kind of fan support and these kind of facilities without having high expectations also.
“Our goal is to return LSU baseball to where it was and that was the very best baseball program in the entire country. We are not going to rest until we accomplish that goal. I don’t know how long it is going to take. I’m not in the prediction business. We have some great kids in the program. We are going to go out there everyday and play as hard as we can. I think it is about time I started earning a pay check. I know come Friday night when there is a bunch of people in the stands, the goal is to score more runs than the other team. We are going to do our very best to do that. Obviously, you can’t win them all, but we are going to try to do that every time we go on the field to play.”
ASSISTANT COACH CLIFF GODWIN (hitting coach)
“The last time I was a part of an LSU baseball game was back in 1999 when I came to play in a regional here for East Carolina University. The first thing I remember walking into the stadium was looking up in right field at the Intimidator and seeing four national championships at that time. I was like wow. That is pretty intimidating. Then we walked in as a coaching staff and I turned to Coach Mainieri and I said that sign is a lot less intimidating when I know it is going to be on my side of the field.”
“We’ve had a great group of guys that have really bought into our system. Those guys work hard, tremendously hard on their own not just when we we’re watching them. Monday is historically our off day, and there are seven or eight guys in the cages banging out balls. If you can get a group of guys to buy into your system and to work hard like that, you are going to be okay. We are going to have some guys that can really run, and we are going to have a handful of guys that can drive the baseball out of the ballpark. J.T. Wise hit 11 home runs last year. He’s got a chance to hit the ball out of the baseball field and also have a lot of doubles. Chris Jackson, obviously you guys know as a football player, he comes out and after the first week of practice, he has one of the best swings on our team. He drives balls to the gap on a consistent basis. He will probably be hitting in the three hole for us on Friday night.
“First base, Sean Ochinko, is a freshman. The best thing he has going for him is confidence. If all of our hitters could have confidence like him, we would be okay. Fundamentally, his swing might be long but when he steps into the box, he doesn’t think anybody can beat him. That is what we try to tell our hitters and preach to our hitters all the time, just go into the box, be aggressive and have quality at-bats. Hitting is a game of failure. If you fail seven out of 10 times, you are still considered great. The last thing we talk about is hitting in the clutch. Coach Mainieri has really mentored me in that aspect of it. You can make good teams into championship teams if you drive in runs with two outs. When there is a runner at second base and there is a guy hitting .250 but he’s got 50 RBI, he’s going to be in our lineup.
“Robert Lara has the chance to be one of the best defensive catchers in the SEC. I just told him yesterday that I appreciate all of the hard work he has done but he can’t let up. I drive him each and every day to be the best catcher in the country. Offensively, he’s not going to be the best hitter, but he’s one of the best catch-and-throw guys I have ever worked with. I hope he continues to work hard and lead our pitching staff to great things.”
ASSISTANT COACH TERRY ROONEY (pitching coach)
“I feel very fortunate to be here and be a part of this program. I take great pride at being a pitching coach here at LSU and try to continue the great long-standing tradition of great pitching which this program has had. I have been fortunate to have great conversations with Coach (Dan) Canevari and Coach Bertman about it. When you look at our pitching staff one of the biggest things when we came here in the fall from a team standpoint was evaluate and analyze what we have. When you look at our pitching staff, regardless of the depth and experience, we look at each one of our guys and feel that each one of them has something positive they can offer. We truly believe that. That’s going to go into our system that Coach Mainieri and I talked about it.
“This year, you are going to see a lot of different pitchers have a lot of different roles within our pitching staff. That is going to be a big process of how we are going to be successful. We focus on the things that we can control. When you focus on the things that you can control as pitching staff, there are elements to that. No. 1 is being mechanically sound. No. 2 is being in physically-fit condition. No. 3 is controlling the running game. No. 4 is understanding situation pitching, and No. 5 is fielding your position. It’s those five elements that we tell our guys on a daily basis. If they focus on those elements, we can be successful. Thus, I think we have the makings of a very successful pitching staff. On Friday night, it is going to be Charlie Furbush. Charlie Furbush is a transfer from a Division III school, Saint Joe’s College in Maine. Charlie Furbush has earned the right to be our opening night pitcher. You are going to see out of Charlie a young man that has tremendous stuff. He’s going to throw a fastball in the upper 80s, a curveball and a straight changeup. All of those pitches have continued to improve. The biggest challenge that Charlie Furbush has when he came here to LSU is that as great as his stuff is, the margin of error is a little bit different pitching here at Alex Box Stadium as it is to pitching in the Cape Cod League or up in Maine. That is something I have really strived to get Charlie to accomplish is kind of slow down his delivery a bit and improve upon his command of strikes. He’s a tremendous competitor. I am looking forward to seeing that out of him this weekend.
“Our Saturday starter is going to be sophomore Louis Coleman. He was a mainstay for a large majority of the season last year. Louis Coleman has made tremendous strides for us. We’ve tried to establish a game plan and establish the type of philosophy that he can work with. We really implemented with him the ability to throw pitches and hope they can kind of swing and hit it, as we call it forcing the action. We are exciting about the two starting pitchers that coach has already named for Friday and Saturday. Our Sunday starter is still to be determined. We have a tremendous bullpen right now led by Jared Bradford, Nolan Cain, Ryan Byrd and Paul Bertuccini.”
Following are quotes from junior shortstop Michael Hollander, a 2006 second-team all-SEC selection, and from junior left-hander Charlie Furbush, LSU’s starting pitcher for Friday’s opening game.
LSU Player Quotes
Shortstop Michael Hollander
On his role in helping the younger players …
“We have a bunch of new faces. A lot of them are freshmen, a couple transfers. I think they are going to help our team a tremendous amount. A lot of them are highly talented. They’re a little nervous just as I was when I was a freshman, but I told them I would try to walk them through it. I told them there’s going to be a lot of people watching. You just have to turn that nervous energy into a positive energy and make it enthusiasm and a focus. I think a lot of them are real mature for their age. I think they’ll come in and do fine for us.”
On how he earned the starting job at shortstop by his hard work …
“We came out here in the fall. We were a little sluggish and slow. We didn’t know what to expect at first, but we’ve made tremendous strides. They (the coaches) ran the heck out of us. It brought us closer as a team, and we gelled real well. With all the physical beating, we had to pull together as a team, and I think it’s gotten us to where we are today. I think we’ve been ready for two weeks to come out and show everybody what we’ve got on Friday.”
Left-Handed Pitcher Charlie Furbush
On the transition of coming from Maine to Louisiana …
“It’s gone well. It’s kind of a dream come true for me. Ever since I was a kid I wanted to play pro baseball, and this (LSU) is where I need to be to get to where I want to go. Everything’s just falling into place right now.”
On winning the Friday night starting pitching job …
“I’ve worked hard, and the team has worked really hard. The team just worked out every day in the fall. We came out here in the spring, and we’re getting ready to go. We’re all amped up to play.”
On how he likes to pitch …
“I like to throw my fastball a lot, get ahead of guys and mix in my changeup and slider.”
On what has been the biggest adjustment for him on and off the field …
“It’s kind of both. I went to a school with a thousand people, and classes weren’t so big. I kind of got used to it after a couple of weeks. Baseball-wise, I really didn’t know what I was getting myself in to; I just knew I wanted to play baseball every day. Coming here, I’ve got the sun shining and it’s February. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me.”