Technician: Coach, it has been a while since your team’s last action. How ready and excited are you guys for this weekend’s season-opening series against La Salle?
Avent: Everybody’s always anxious to get going. I don’t care what the sport is, opening day is very special, and the same goes for us. You never want it to come too soon, because you never feel like you’ve prepared enough, and certainly this season with the amount of cold and wet weather we have had. But no matter how prepared you are, you are still ready for opening day to come.
Technician: The team finished 25-31 (10-20 ACC) after high pre-season expectations. What will be the keys to bouncing back and being more successful this season?
Avent: Every season can turn on the funniest thing and you never know how you’re going to be. Last season we had great expectations and got off to a pretty good start and went down to Miami and opened up down there. As strange as the season turned out, we really felt like we could have swept them and it didn’t turn out like that. We lost two out of three. We didn’t recover very well from that, so we felt like last season could have gone differently. You don’t ever try to make one season different than the other. You try to do the same things that you always do to prepare and get better and play the season the best that you can. The guys have done a great job and gone about things very well. What you’re looking to do is make improvement as the season goes along. You know you’re never prepared on opening day for any season and certainly not this season. But you try to make progress as the season goes along and teach your team how to fight, overcome adversity and do all the things that it takes to be successful over the course of a long season.
Technician: Tell me a little about this year’s pitching staff.
Avent: We’re very unsure about our pitching staff. We have a lot of guys that have pitched before, such as seniors John Lambert and Alex Sogard, but they’re coming off off-season surgery. Even though they’re ahead of schedule and throwing the ball real well, they’re still coming off surgery. So you never know how well they’re going to pitch and you don’t know the time sequence for that to unfold. We have some veterans like juniors Jake Buchanan and Grant Sasser, guys that have been around a couple years that are throwing well. They’re going to have to give you quality innings to allow Sogard and Lambert and some of the young guys like freshmen Danny Healey and Ethan Ogburn to come around.
Technician: It’s recently come out that a certain quarterback might take the mound this year.
Avent: One of the new guys we have pitching this year, that everyone’s familiar with his name, is junior Russell Wilson. Russell’s always wanted to pitch here and because of football and the amount of time we have we’ve always discouraged that. This year Russell is pitching for us a little bit, so it will be interesting to see how that is going to go.
Technician: Are there any positions where players are still fighting it out to determine the starter?
Avent: Any time when things are up for grabs this close to the season, it speaks to the depth of your ballclub. We have three shortstops who are playing very, very well and three catchers that are playing very well. Pitching and defense win games, obviously. But we’re looking to get as many bats in the lineup as well. Opening day will be opening day, but things still aren’t set for this ballclub yet.
Technician: Who will be the starting pitchers this weekend?
Avent: The three weekend starters for the first weekend are Buchanan on opening day, sophomore Cory Mazzoni on Saturday and Danny Healey on Sunday.
Technician: The ACC has a reputation as being a strong baseball conference. What does that mean for the schedule you guys will play this season and what kind of non-conference schedule will you guys have?
Avent: It’s a very grueling and grinding season. The ACC is, if not the toughest league in the country, certainly one of the top two or three. It’s a great schedule as it always is. When you play in this league and in this state, your conference and your non-conference schedule is going to be tough. The second weekend of the season we go down to Myrtle Beach and play UC Irvine, who is top-five in the country and Coastal Carolina, who I think is in the top 15 or 20 in the country. It’s hard to predict preseason rankings as well. I know the ACC is loaded with people in the preseason top 20, but it’s not about the preseason. It’s about the postseason and hopefully we can make a dent on that as the season goes along.
