re: Tide Baseball 31-27 (12-17)

quote:

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Gary L. Harris@garyharris_wvua·2h.
@AlabamaBSB Head Coach @CoachBo_Bama joined The Gary Harris Show Tuesday morning on @Tide1009 to preview the 2022 season. Click on the link to listen to the podcast.

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Recap of Bo's comments:

- Momentum built last year with regional berth does help for this year. Gave returners taste of postseason and some confidence.

- By far the best collection of talent since he's been here. Good mixture of experience and legitimate talent. Have to have some "real bullets" in this league to be successful. Feels we do on this team.

- Loves this team. To finish in the upper third of the league you've probably got to be a top 10 or so team in the country. Can't make predictions but we have 8-9 kids drafted this year, multiple top three round kids on the team and some kids that will be major leaguers. Good, competitive group, but we've faced no adversity yet.

- Mid-major teams like Xavier are very good because they have a bunch of 22 and 23 year olds right now. They will be a top 2-3 team in their league. They won 2 of 3 at Texas A&M last year. It will be a good challenge out of the gate. Need to play this kind of team before we go to Texas.

- Connor Preilipp is doing well but have not had any conversations about his future. If he were healthy last year and now he'd almost certainly be a top 5 overall pick in draft. Just focused on his health.

- Elephant in the room with this team is experience on the mound. Don't have a lot of SEC experience. We do have a lot of arm talent though - as much as we've had. McMillan will start Friday, Jean on Saturday, and Hitt on Sunday. I would be very comfortable starting 6-7 guys in SEC games. There just isn't a lot of separation in our top 7-8 guys. Committed to using Guffey out of the pen. Green will be closer. I seriously doubt in 5-6 weeks the rotation will be the same. Lots of guys will have extended outings early on with 5 games in 6 days.

- Really nice to have experience in the batting order. All our returning players are incrementally better. I think we can be middle pack or upper third offensively in the league this year. I think we'll hit 70-80 home runs. We've got good depth in our lineup.

- Zane Denton has a hitting gene. He just hits. Best thing about him is that he loves being at the baseball field, playing and practicing. You feed off kids like that as a coach.

- This weekend is big for confidence. Our kids don't doubt their ability but you still have to play to get better. We need to establish how we're going to play starting this weekend. Most concerned with our mentality and how we go about our business.

- I wanted to go to Miss State and Ole Miss in the fall because they are top five teams and we go to both of those places. It's good for the new people in our program to go to those places and see what it's about. I have great respect for those programs. It was good for our players to have that experience and know that we are going back in April. I think it was good for our confidence and hopefully it pays off this spring.

- When you play in the SEC you need to have one really tough challenge before starting league play. I told our operations guy that in 2022 we needed to find a tough road opponent. Didn't know at that time Texas would be the #1 team in the country. This is the first team we've had here where we have third year players that we've recruited with a full timeline. We've got some maturity and I want to go to Texas and see what it looks like. No matter what happens there, we'll be more prepared when Florida comes to town for SEC play.