College World Series: Everything Link Jarrett, pair of FSU players had to say before facing Tennessee (2024)

Proud of the team. Proud of these two. Proud of the program and what was accomplished this year. It was a difficult trek. The response from last year for this group to open the season and go one-third of the season without losing a game, pretty remarkable.

The schedule was difficult. The midweek stuff is such a challenge. You guys know what the league is about. They earned everything that they achieved. This is the pinnacle of the sport. You'll never see the sport played at the amateur level better than you're going to see it in this event. The age of the players, the physicality of the players, the ability for players like these two guys to find a home that suits what they're trying to do for their future, it's as good as you'll see.

The hospitality in Omaha, absolutely love it. It's building. Like I've seen it 34 years ago, and I was out here three times as a player, and it just continues to grow, and it has grown from 2022 to today. Watching this thing build, the energy and excitement and the field and the vibe of everything that surrounds this event puts it in the conversation with any other major sporting event you want to talk about: Augusta, the Final Four, Super Bowl. Just pick one, this matches it.

This weekend is awesome, and it's because of the community. It's because of guys like these two that have elevated the sport. It's because of the coverage that you guys provide that has made this a global event, and the college game has never been in a better position. How is that?

DANIEL CANTU: The field is in great condition. The grass is a little bit different than Florida grass, but it plays a little slower. Maybe they'll cut it tomorrow, but we'll see.

It's been great. The field is pretty big, but nothing that we can't handle.

ALEX LODISE: Like he said, the outfield is very different dimensions than our home park. Right field is a lot deeper. We don't have the high fence. We'll just be able to adjust to it and play our best ball.

DANIEL CANTU: We weren't a part of last year's team, but hearing what went on last year, we definitely wanted to come in and make a difference and help this team win and build a winning culture again and get back on track and back to the promise land in Omaha, and that's exactly what we did.

ALEX LODISE: Like he said, we were not here last year, but we know our team. We're just one big family. That's all Cam Leiter we are. One big family. We just go out and we just play like we all are a family and just have fun while we're doing it.

DANIEL CANTU: I saw what Coach Jarrett was building over here at FSU, and I wanted to be a part of it. He brought in some really great guys to get us back here, and we all -- he did a really great job helping blend this team together and help us create that team chemistry, and we created a great family chemistry, like Alex said.

Yeah, we built that and got a winning culture back at FSU, and we're here to stay, and we're here to win.

ALEX LODISE: We're a very confident bunch. We know we can play with the best. These are the seven other best teams in the country. We're here because we can compete with them, and we know that watching them -- when you watch other teams play, it's knowing, like, with our confidence we're here, and we know we're capable of playing.

DANIEL CANTU: Like Alex said, we are a very confident bunch. We feel as if we carry ourselves and feel as if we're the best in the country, and we know that we can beat anyone if we play our brand of baseball.

DANIEL CANTU: Coach Jarrett is like Pappa Bear and we're just his younglings. We follow his lead.

He does a really great job with really programming us and getting us all in line and just completing the task at hand each and every day and going out and winning -- going 1-0 each and every day and keeping us where our feet are in the moment and really just completing the task at hand. It's been a really great job. He's an amazing leader and an amazing coach. Very thankful to have this opportunity to play for him.

ALEX LODISE: He pretty much covered it. There's no other coach in the country that you want to go out to the field every day, and you see him as, all right, we're going to have a great practice. We know it's going to be structured well, and you just know what you are getting yourself into.

As infielders, there's no other coach in the country that I would rather learn defensive -- the defensive style from the infield from than Coach Jarrett.

DANIEL CANTU: Omaha is always the end goal, but he kept us -- him and all the other coaches kept us focused on just a one-game-at-a-time mentality and going to war each and every day we get to step on the field and not really looking ahead, but looking at what is exactly in front of us with that day, and we get to play that game and we win that game, and we go 1-0, and then the next day we go 1-0 and then the next day we go 1-0. Those wins just keep piling up, and that's how we got here.

ALEX LODISE: Yeah, I mean, he said it. You play every day just to win that game on that day. That's pretty much -- when you win one game every day, it's going to help you get here.

LINK JARRETT: 100%. How you feel as a player, I've got that. How you feel as a coach in it, I've got that. How you feel as a parent here, I actually have that too. Like, the 2021 deal.

So, yes. I try to go into that reserve and pull out what information I think really helps them, helps the coaches and actually helps the parents. I wanted the parents to have the timeline of what we're doing because you've waited your whole parental life to get to a moment where you can be here. So I want them to all learn from me, and I feel like my responsibility is to create the most seamless path for them to get to Friday when we start the actual game.

So that's what I try to do, and I do. I look at it from every possible angle, and there's very few -- I'm fortunate to have seen it from all of those angles.

LINK JARRETT: Program development, big-picture stuff, big-picture facility, calendars, big stuff, alumni, that program, player development. What am I going to do with Cantu and Lodise every day that they're practicing and playing the game? Evaluation. Was Cantu the correct person when we evaluated him to bring into the program?

Recruitment. How do you convince these two guys to come to your school? You can evaluate better than anybody in the history of the sport; if you can't convince the right people to come to Florida State, then it doesn't matter how well you evaluate.

Then you have to manage the game.

So what I've done today is really all of those. Program development is what I'm doing with you. Recruiting, our staff all morning. You can like the transfer stuff or not. The fact that we're trying to make these decisions and you are talking to players and they're calling you and trying to figure out how did the visit go last week, that's happening right now.

So all of this is in play to get to the game. When you think of, hey, you're a baseball coach, I think most people think of what happens from -- what time is our game? 6:07? The coach is coaching them up. They're playing baseball.

When you start in this industry, you really don't know that those five things are equally critical. If you are good at all five, you have a chance to be in this room. If you are good at four, it's up for grabs whether you'll make it. If you are good at two or three, probably not here.

So I try to dive in. I've been a lot of places. I try to dive in. When you get somewhere, what do you have to attack and fix in each one of those areas to try to get it right? Those are the five.

In this day and age, to add 26 players I think we added, that was an interesting -- I saw a little graph today of the players, but the combination of some of the junior college players that are clearly older, these guys that are a little older and more experienced, to be able to throw that in the pot with the guys that were back with us that had some grooming from last year and galvanized a little bit, that's -- those are the five things all in play.

LINK JARRETT: It's probably not far off, is it? It's not. Damaging, threatening, physical, intense, balanced. Just pick whatever you want, man. I mean, I know what we're walking into, and I know what we walked into in 2022.

I told the guys, and I'll tell them again: Once the game starts, it doesn't know. So our stats, their stats, the game doesn't know what's supposed to happen. You have to go manage and take charge of the game. There will be opportunities for that game to go one way or another. Either you're bringing your A stuff in the A moment or you're not, and the pendulum, it will go one way or another.

I know how good they are. They're unbelievable, unbelievably talented. This is a little bit of Clash of the Titans. I think our team, emotional team. This is an emotional group. Sometimes that emotion, we've seen it spill over a little bit where the guys hit a home run, the excitement, the punch-out. What you're going to see, I don't think we've ever seen it before. This Clash of the Titans, it's going to be exciting. People are looking forward to this. Our guys are looking forward to it. I know the Tennessee crowd is thrilled. I've seen how passionate they are. I think we have the best fans in the world, the pitch-by-pitch engagement.

This is top-of-the-food-chain stuff.

LINK JARRETT: Arnold will go, and then you're going to use some relievers you would think at some point in this thing. Maybe not. It would be great if we didn't.

But then you get to rest. So you can recalibrate guys that you may not be able to do so in back-to-back days of competition like this. So it's really neat. Again, I keep telling you, this is the best you're going to see the game played ever at this level. It hasn't been played better than this. You're also going to see that continue because the dynamic relievers that throw some but not too much, they're going to be right back out there.

So it's really neat. It's different. It's different. The number of guys that you use throughout the course of an ACC or an SEC weekend or a regional tournament or super regional, it may not get to that if things go really well for you. If your starter can get you some length and a reliever will get you to the finish line, if you can repeat that script, it might even be the same couple of relievers. Then how quickly can a starter within the realm of health and reality come back? All of those things are different here.

It's good, and it probably allows for even a better type of baseball.

LINK JARRETT: His mentality has matured. He's matured in day-to-day work, realizing the trajectory and the potential. We had a serious heart-to-heart. Chuck and I sat down with him about halfway through last year. I wrote what I thought were the top left-handed arms looking forward to next year's draft. I just did it. Here we go. There's what we see right now. You either want to be in that conversation, and I don't know what to tell you the other side of this board is. I didn't write anything on it because there's nothing to write. You're either going to go in this direction or you'll go -- just to try to make him understand how good he could be at this.

The day-to-day arm care, strength and conditioning, conditioning, pitch shaping, flat groundwork, PFP work. When you start, you have six other days to manage the rest of your craft.

So I think just the maturity of ownership in all of that versus when you are excited to go out and throw and it's fun and it's Friday afternoon and here we go, there's more to it if you really want to be the best. 18-year-old kids don't really know all that yet. That's what they need us for to push them, and you have the support with Phil, the trainer, Jamie, the strength coach. Micah does a great job pitching management day-to-day stuff.

Use those resources, but the individual still has to own it and attack it and do it every single day with some intent and some energy. And he's done it. So then when he walks out there, you're starting to see a more physical kid, a more confident kid, a more determined kid. Fastball slider, the changeup is coming along. When do you use that changeup? I don't know. It seems like the fastball plays so well. Are you doing somebody a favor when you flip a changeup in there? It's a tricky piece to try to inject in there. We talk about it, work on it.

There's still more. But the growth and maturity and the outings have been really good. The matchup, sometimes you think with him, wow, that's a tough matchup, and he absolutely carves, and then other times it looks like a good matchup, and it's more of a dogfight from pitch one than you would think.

It's just part of it, but the maturity, the growth, the thoughtfulness of what he does, that's what stands out to me the most.

LINK JARRETT: I can hear his voice, and it probably talks to me more than any other athletically-minded voice could ever speak to me. Like, you hear a lot of people talk, and you think about things, and I've had other great coaches around me in my time, but I played for him, and I can hear his voice talk to me as a player. I can hear his voice talk to me as a young coach when I coached with him for one season.

I can hear his voice talking to his family.

So I learned so many different things from what is just a remarkable human being. He's an amazing person in my life. He was like a second father figure to me, and the times on the field and learning and the foundation of how to play the game at the college level, the college game is different. It's not Major League Baseball. This is different. It's not high school baseball.

Each one of those worlds has its own feel to it. Then there's recruiting and other things that go into it, but my foundation was laid in a lot of those areas by him, and I hear his voice. I hear his voice in games of thinking through maneuvers and bullpen management and defensive things and offensive parts of the game.

Then you have to evolve with your personality and style from your foundation and you're building off of what you learn initially. And then I'm different than -- there's only one of him. There's only one. I'm very fortunate to have been around him a lot, and I got to spend some time with him and some days where the decline was rapid, and I'm very fortunate that I did that. I can hear his voice in every different walk of my being. It's an important voice.

LINK JARRETT: Well, when you talked about pitching -- if you start with baseball, pitching, defense, and base running. Then when you are playing, you are, like, hey, man, I want to hit too. When you look at it now, he knew if you could pitch, play defense, and run the bases, you were going to be in every single game. Every single game.

Offensively, to go further, you have to figure out a way against the type of arms that we're going to deal with here. You'll have to figure out a way to scratch and claw and score. But the fundamental of pitching, defense, and base running, I can hear him say. You talk about voice. I can hear pitching, defense, and base running, that's what this is about.

I know why that was the case. So you can start with that. Now, I talk about 11 a lot, and part of the room that we have, which the tradition room, I have a TV that's dedicated solely to his story and his accolades and his life, and Carol is on there, when you go in there and push play, it will tell you the whole story.

So it's that important to me and to that program that we have one-fourth of the space dedicated to him and what he did there. That's going to stay right there. So everybody that walks in -- you want to walk in and hear it? There it is. And it runs. It's running. Like, he is on there, and his picture is there.

Now, I want to win it for him. Like, why as a player couldn't I get it done? It keeps me up. What did I not do? What were we not doing that kept us from that? Part of the reason the five program pieces, I was so determined to figure out myself what I needed to do to get it done here, did I ever think I would be sitting here coaching it? No. You don't think that that's going to happen. You really don't, but I owe it to the program, him, to figure out how to finish it.

So that's the messaging. Our guys were thrilled. Like, we're sitting there in the room, and I told them: When we walk out of this room and you get on that plane, there's 400 people standing along the sides of the bus. You're going to walk through that, and this will never be the same. Like, it's never -- so when we get up and leave, you're going to feel differently the moment you open that locker room door and off you go and here it starts.

In that corner in the cabinet trophy case there there's something missing. So I'm not happy to walk out through the people. That probably doesn't come off right. I'm happy to walk through to come where we are trying to take that bus and that plane, but I'm not happy with the result that I've had. So what do we do when we walk out of that room to enjoy those moments, but try to make sure that the result for us is just a little bit better and gets us that final trophy that is not sitting in that cabinet over there?

That is what all of that means to me and what I need to accomplish here to really feel that I've completed this.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

TONY VITELLO: Seeing some of the local media, we did have a few fans. I'm not sure how they let people in the stadium, what the requirement is during BP, but we did have some ball fans out there, or kids too. Just happy that people get to experience this.

The competition, juices get flowing. You kind of forget about that. At some point you have to make sure that you enjoy it if you are a participant, but more than anything, I'm thankful and happy that all the folks that rally around our program get to be here.

Q. Drew and Hunter, you got through the first big practice. How were the conditions out there? And how do you keep that sense of normalcy and just keep it baseball this week?

HUNTER ENSLEY: Yeah, I think conditions-wise for the field, I think it rained a little bit last night. So I think the grass was a little longer and dirt is a little mushy, but I think tomorrow will be fine. Probably cut the grass down a little bit, so it's not going to be as long.

Hopefully it's not mud, but if it is, we'll figure a way out to deal with it.

DREW BEAM: The bullpen today was pretty sweet. Bullpens are always pristine here. Just excited to get out there and get to play.

Q. I'm going to obviously want Tony to weigh in on this as well later, but obviously you're aware of the history. It's incredibly hard to get here. It's incredibly even harder to win it. How aware are you of the history? 1999 is a long time for someone to not be a No. 1 seed and not have won since then. Does that just kind of illustrate how difficult it is and how aware are you of that history?

DREW BEAM: I think it's just all numbers, to be honest. The game will play itself.

HUNTER ENSLEY: I think it's definitely something you see floating around, you know, the internet and stuff like that, Instagram, Twitter. It's almost impossible to not see it. But at the end of the day, the better team that goes out on the field wins, and any day it can be whoever it is.

The 1 seed could beat the No. 8 seed or a team that isn't ranked at all could beat the 1 seed. We've seen it happen many times. The only thing we can control is going out there and playing our game. If we play our game, hopefully we come out with a win.

Q. This question is for Drew, and Hunter, please chime in because you've played in games at this stage as well. How difficult is it to block out all the extra noise? There's a lot of fans. There's the fanfare. This is the greatest show on dirt. Keep the main thing the main thing, which is go out there and play baseball.

DREW BEAM: I think it's almost cool how many fans are here. There's not many times in your life you get to play in front of 26,000 people. So it's almost -- to me it almost doesn't make me more nervous or more amped up. It's a cool atmosphere.

So you kind of embrace it and just really enjoy being in it, to me personally.

HUNTER ENSLEY: I would say the same thing. This is pretty much why everyone wants to come play here. You're kind of the main event. You get in front of all the people, but come game time, you know, adrenaline gets going. You're pretty much just locked in on the game and everything else is just outside noise.

Q. Drew and Hunter, you all were both here before. Is there anything y'all are going to do differently this time that you didn't do last time?

HUNTER ENSLEY: Yeah, I think a good message to relay on the guys is trying to slow everything down. I know sometimes you get out on the field and get under the lights, you want to go a little too fast or do too much.

So, I don't know, I think my message to everyone would be just to slow everything down and focus on what's actually going on in the game rather than, you know, trying to have a huge moment.

DREW BEAM: Yeah, just piggyback off of that, especially for the pitching staff. There's a lot of guys on this team that have been here before, so relaying to the guys who haven't been here that it's still 60 feet, 6 inches. It's still throwing it over the plate. It's still doing the same thing we've been doing all year long, just a different venue.

Q. Can you guys just speak to how the SEC prepares you for the big stages like this, I mean, the grind of the season and all that.

HUNTER ENSLEY: Yeah, well I think the teams in our league are pretty similar to the ones we'll see here. Obviously there's four on both sides, but I also think just going on the road and getting to play in those big environments, especially Hoover kind of reminds me of this place a little bit. So just being able to go on the road and getting in environments like this, which are pretty similar to this one, helps this group.

DREW BEAM: Yeah, the caliber of teams we play all year long are similar, and some of the same teams that are here right now.

You go into every weekend knowing it's going to be a dogfight, so it's the same thing when you get here.

Q. Does your sense of familiarity and the staff's sense of familiarity with this place help you guys in any way when you show up here and have a little bit of a game plan when you show up to Omaha?

TONY VITELLO: I think so. You know, all of us want to look at the itinerary and make it as productive for our guys as possible and try and put the guys in a position to succeed. But at some point the umpire is going to yell out, "Play ball," and then it's going to turn into warfare, whatever cliche you want to throw out there, and you're going to see nothing but good players.

It helps. There are teams that have come here their first time and done well, and there are teams that maybe had a less talented roster but done better because, you know, that experience.

I think it helps in a lot of different ways that are away from the field, but again, once the game starts, you just have to play ball. And how much of a factor all those items have, I don't know which time you enjoy it more, your first or second. Now you know downtime, how it works out, how you're going to mix in family time and things like that. I don't know how much it benefits when the game or competition starts, but it certainly all comes a little smoother I think as you experience it.

Q. Six top 100 prospects alone, a lot more talent on your team beyond that. With that much talent, it's not a given that you can make it work in one room, but you guys seem to have done that. No. 1 seed here at CWS. How have you been able to make that work so effectively this season with so many high-profile guys?

TONY VITELLO: Well, I think some of those guys have put themselves into that position, whereas maybe they weren't there a year ago or earlier in the year.

So it kind of starts with that, when your best or most talented players are pushing themselves to get more physical or to get better mentality-wise or mature and elevate their status as an individual, the team gets better. With this group in particular, I can't take any credit for, like, making the personalities work.

I'm from St. Louis. Joe Torre goes from there to the Yankees, and it's a little better roster, and it really becomes about managing egos and when to tell Marino Rivera to go in the game.

With this, I can't even say I've done any of that. These guys took ownership of that locker room in August, the most or quickest I've ever seen a freshman class merge with the older guys, and then the older guys have been about as willing as any group I've been around for leadership: Tell me where you want me to play, when you want me to pitch, how you want me to do this, and I'll go do it.

It's been a unique group, and it's made work fun.

Q. Could you just kind of weigh in on what I was talking about earlier about how difficult it obviously is to get here and then obviously the 1999 thing is kind of ridiculous.

TONY VITELLO: Sure, it's a number. First of all, it's difficult to get here, and once you are here, it's even more difficult to win. Part of that is the talent that's here.

So the seeding to me kind of evaporates. It's valuable in the first round because if you line up those four teams, the 1 seed is normally going to get the team that maybe is not as potent as the others. But once you get here, there aren't really any underdogs or anything like that.

I talk with Sully throughout the year, and they have a team like we had last year. There's plenty of talent, but they kind of had to go through figure out what combination works and overcome some things, and kudos to them for making it here.

All you have to do is stand next to Cags for two seconds, and there's no more underdogs. They had to go on the road again like we did last year. Anybody can beat anybody. Everybody knows that. Then you mentioned the numbers, whether it's 1999 or just numbers game in general, it really is a numbers game.

Now there's a championship series. There wasn't one when I was younger. Really the only four teams that matter are us and the three that we're in that group with. Out of four teams, one of them has to come out.

Just like those other three teams, right now our guys are saying, well, why not us? One out of four. Regardless of who is ranked or slotted where. Then Hunter brought it up. He listed off I think a social media thing I've never even heard of. And I'm not on Twitter. I mess around with Instagram a little bit. You said 1999. If you jump on the Google machine, you'll see that's right about when social media started and then it picked up steam.

I don't think those two things are coincidence. We've dealt with it this year. We knew some things were coming when the NCAA committee -- not that there's any conspiracies or anything out there, but there was a couple of things that were going to happen with that bracket. Everybody predicted that in January.

So our guys had to battle not only the teams that we were playing against, but some of those underlying storylines that were available in our regional and other spots like that and how you confront those storylines and those labels that people give, whether it's your seed or this can happen or can't happen.

That now is part of competition for young kids. Where they're ranked by perfect game in high school, it's part of competition, so our guys need to compete against the right things and they need to choose what those right things are. Again, when we play Florida State, they're one of four teams, but they're the only one that matters on Friday, and they are very, very good.

Q. Tony, last year you kind of talked about the building blocks of your program and what that's looked like. What did you learn here last year? What are the biggest take-aways there? What's kind of been the story of this team?

TONY VITELLO: Sure. Last year was we faced Skenes right out of the gate, and he is obviously outstanding.

We competed the whole game, and fortunately, just get him out of the game. It was pretty late, though.

Then the bounceback feeling was what I really liked. We play Stanford. Incredibly talented. Yet, you had a little extra determination in there from the loss.

I don't think we were true to ourselves in that last game. Maybe we just got beat, but it was reminiscent of '21 when we got here. Our guys -- if you interview any of them and there's very competitive guys in that '21 group, we just were not true to ourselves.

Again, when we show up on Friday, we could either win or we could lose, but I would prefer when we get back on the bus to go back to the hotel, we won or lost as the 2024 Vols. By now it's deep enough into the season you guys can look from afar or our fans can make comments, but we know what that looks like and feels like.

I was looking for a Christmas present. I'm not a father. If I was looking for a Father's Day present, it would be just to be ourselves. That ties into your other question of what's this team look like or been. It's, again -- I just have to fall on the team chemistry thing.

Not up here with a bunch of Rudy's or guys that played like I did skill-wise. There's plenty of skill in that locker room, but again, just the vibe has been a good party during stretch. And then in pregame, you know, guys are trying to get stuff done and they're communicating, but they're also having fun.

Then during our games, there's been a good understanding of what a nine-inning game is. You don't want your guys getting too high or too low or dog-cussing somebody in the third inning and you have six innings left or you're down or you're up. It's been a mature group.

Q. Coach, it's the first time that Tennessee has made back-to-back trips and three in the last four years. I'm curious, for the guys that were a part of the journey but didn't play in '21 or last year, what is it like to see so many of them have ownership in that Tennessee wouldn't have been here this year without them and big-time contributions as they progress?

TONY VITELLO: It's huge. If you have seen "The Last Dance," you take motivation any way you can get it. A lot of those guys were motivated just to get here and experience it, if they hadn't, to get here and maybe play a little bit more of a role, to get here and get action, or to get here and play better than they did in the past if they are in the other category.

It's really fun to see this lineage. You know, at Missouri if you count the years I was on the team trying to play and getting out there every now and then and coaching, it's longer than Tennessee, but now I've been here longer than the other two spots combined.

I'm not a big -- my dad was at the same school for 48 years, so it's kind of nice to see that lineage that he had while he was there, and now we're kind of getting that with our deal. It's paying dividends that some of the older players can coach the younger players, and there's a little bit of handing down the torch.

Q. What does it mean to just see four and four now, four SEC teams, four ACC teams, that are last standing at the Schwab. How do you feel about the team you have now built out, No. 1 team in the nation, and just to see guys like Billy and Christian throughout the season and that could possibly play at the next level down the road?

TONY VITELLO: Those guys have fed off each other. It's been a unique environment. With guys like Billy and Blake and C. Mo at the very top of the order, not only do they feed off each other competitively, because they all want to kind of carry the same weight, but they cheer for each other, especially on the day that's not going well for them.

Because if you look at our box scores, there's been a lot of days where maybe this guy didn't really contribute that much, if you look at his at-bats statistically, but the others did. Then it might flip. Or it might be the bottom of the order versus the top of the order, and it's different the other day.

It's been pretty good to see guys not only compete internally and then also feed off each other's success but also just cheer for each other.

I think overall it's good to be here as the program who we are. There's been a lot that's kind of gone on through the season. I accidentally went on a little bit of a rant, but we had to work to be in the spot that we're in, whether it's opinions by people or once you get to the point where someone is actually hoisting a trophy, opinions start to lose a lot of value because it was just done on the field.

I think there's still work to be done for all eight teams that are here. I'm glad we're one of them. We get to do work on the field.

The thing I really like is that a few more bus trips, a few more plane rides or a few more days hanging out in the hotel, it's a fun group to do that with.

Q. You've had a few guys that have had tremendous years: Christian Moore, Blake Burke. How you have seen them grow throughout the season, and what kind of leadership roles have they taken on?

TONY VITELLO: I think they've become more professional in their three years of how they've done things. Then, also, the theme I would say first year was learn from the older guys. Big brother approach. Hey, we saw what you did in high school, but this is different, okay, so you have to get on board with what's going on here. At times it was, you know, stern influence from the older guys. Other times it was arm around them. But they really helped.

Those guys watched those older kids, like Trey Lipscomb, and that's kind of the way you're supposed to do it, and they tried to copy it. The next year was kind of like drinking from a firehose. All those guys are gone, so you asked for it, you got it.

I think it was a lot at once to handle being out there every day, being the middle of the order, being the guy that others looked to, you have to produce. Like the example I talked about earlier, we kind of had to work through that a little bit. Because they had to work through that, I think they came out on the other side a lot better people, teammates, and players this year, and I think this year is a byproduct of everything they've worked for in high school and a couple of years in our program.

That's kind of what you want. In recruiting I try to limit it a little bit, but we tell all these guys how great they are and how bad we want them, and every day is sunny on our campus and all that. But it's very, very challenging especially in our day and age now to be a freshman, and it's not always going to be easy.

What you want are players you can envision being your best players as juniors and leaders and a big draft pick maybe, if that's in the cards, when they're juniors, when you are recruiting them. There is some time in between there that everybody needs to support them and help them. If it goes well, they'll grow into what some of those guys have grown into, which is nice.

Q. With the scheduled off days, how does that change, if any, your approach to pitching in this regional type setup to begin?

TONY VITELLO: I think it definitely can for certain teams. It's weird not being able to see you right now, but I think it definitely can if are you a different team. With our team kind of what my mind is thinking, because I'm thinking of different scenarios, is we've kind of played Tetris all year long and tried to make it work with who is available that given day, what maybe we think a matchup is, how a guy is throwing.

I think we're just going to kind of roll and stay true to our roots, roll with what we got, I should say. We'll start with Stam on Friday, and then we'll go from there with what we see fit, and we'll just treat the game that we're playing that particular day as if it's almost kind of the only game we got.

Q. Curious about Jamie Arnold. You'll probably be facing him on Friday night, although he hasn't been announced. How have you scouted him, and what have you seen from him?

TONY VITELLO: I don't know. You're kind of helping us out. We don't know who they're throwing. They've thrown out a few names at us. We'll kind of sit back and relax and wait and kind of picking up where we left off with our last game here.

We went over to Creighton and just hit. So I guess that's part of the deal. When we do know who we're starting, we'll prepare as best we see hit. The DH spot is one spot we've altered some guys. Otherwise, we've almost kind of cement and found our lineup, which is what you want to do towards the end of the year, but it could be a couple of lefties with really good stuff.

The one thing about Arnold from having seen him up in the Cape Cod, I watched a video because he played with one of our guys, he's very similar to a kid I coached name Rick Segoni (phonetic). A real low slot and a really whippy arm.

I think when Florida State started their year the way they did, he had a lot to do with it. When you have a great pitcher like a Skenes, it helps you on that game day and then it helps on all the other days too for obvious reasons.

We'll be patient and see who we're facing, and then we'll prepare as best as we see fit.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports