Quotes From Jay Johnson's Baseball Preseason Press Conference - January 28, 2022

LSU Coach Jay Johnson
Baseball Preseason Press Conference
January 28, 2022

“This (press conference) is outstanding. One of the things that separates LSU is the interest in our program. What a great start to that, having all of you here covering our team. I don’t think this exists many places in the country. For a little background, I would say for the fall our team invested their time incredibly well, had a great semester in the classroom. We were productive on the field in terms of fall training, implementing some things, really focused on player development, on the strength and conditioning piece, and individual things that we wanted each player to set out to do.

“I think that was great. I think that when you’re building a new program or new culture, each step is critically important. This was our players’ first crack with us (the coaching staff) using the month of December on their own, that’s really important in baseball when you talk about pitchers ramping up and building pitch counts and being properly conditioned. I’ll give our players a lot of credit for doing a good job with that. We’ve made the most of our time with the limited hours over the last two weeks and were productive in that phase. Now we need to get to scrimmaging, full hours of training allotted so we can take the next step to preparing for the season.

“Looking at what we’re trying to do and what we’re trying to accomplish, putting it into three phases. Number one is creating the identity or what I would call our “Process of Winning,” and really getting our hands around that and the things that we do to be successful, like mastering the fundamentals that the process encompasses. Then really becoming a connected team with a group of players that will now place the needs of the team above their own. When you turn a corner on the spring, we’re always going to focus on development and player development and our program becomes about the team. I think our players have done a good job, at least in the initial phases of that. That’ll be important with the challenges that come throughout the season or playing in the SEC – that we remain in that character, and we’re working to develop and build that character of the team.

“The next three weeks are my favorite time of the year. I think it’s when we can make the most impact on improvement as coaches. There are a couple things we need to do: we need to get prepared and continue to improve. That will be the task at hand right now and then get to know our personnel a little bit further because with the competition right around the corner, we want to be at a good starting point, put ourselves in position to have some success with the right pieces in place. It’s inevitable over a 56-to-70 game baseball season that you’re going to find the right combination, the longer that you go. When you have a team like ours with some depth, it may not look the same on Game 10 as Game 1, and that’s ok, that’s part of it. We’ll work at finding that right combination at least at the outset here over the next three weeks and work towards what I would call that best team.

“What I would say has been the best positive so far is the buy-in of the players in terms of what we’re trying to accomplish and their mindset, improvement and development of the group. We’ve had zero resistance on any of that, so I think that’s helped us to be productive and the expectation will be that they continue in that frame of mind and in that positive attitude so we can continue making really good strides. Right now, there’s obviously a lot of excitement about the season, naturally so. I think we’ll focus on the self-discipline for them to stay focused on the task at hand and not complicate anything. Like I said, right now that’s still about improving and preparing. For us, the next three weeks will go by fast, but we’re going to have to stay committed to those things so that we can put ourselves in the best position to be successful.”