Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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Under the Dome Five Questions With ��� Irish Baseball Head Coach Mik Aoki Blue & Gold Illustrated: You���ve gotten a lot of help from young pitchers like freshman Nick McCarty (zero earned runs allowed in his first 10 innings on the mound). What is he doing well right now? Aoki: ���I think the big thing with Nick is he has pounded the strike zone. ��� He���s produced a lot of weak contact early in counts. I think it���s been great. ���When young pitchers, or any pitchers for that matter, try to pitch away from contact and pitch to try to miss the bat that���s when they really start to Blue & Gold Illustrated: What are you doing that helps For the second year in a row, Aoki���s get in trouble.��� your teams jump out of the Irish started their season 5-1, Blue & Gold Illustrated: gates with a few big wins each launching Notre Dame into the top 25 during the first week of March What do you hope to learn year? about your team during the Aoki: ���I don���t know that for the first time in seven seasons. photo courtesy notre dame media relations seven games in eight days the formula has changed very much since year one. The big part of it has been you���ll play in California in mid-March? that we���ve gotten a little more talented each year. Aoki: ���We���re still going to be in a big learning ��� I think a lot of it is just the culture in the club- phase. We���re playing in four different locations if you count USC and UCLA separately. house at this point. ���Hopefully it���ll be a good time for our team to ���These guys have gained some confidence. I think they���re at a place in their minds where they bond. Hopefully it tests our club and it hardens us a little bit I hope.��� feel like they���re capable of beating everybody.��� Mik Aoki is in his third season at the helm of the Notre Dame baseball program. For the second year in a row, Aoki���s Irish started their season 5-1, including a three-game sweep of Tulane University. Those wins helped launch Notre Dame into the top 25 during the first week of March for the first time in seven seasons. Aoki recently joined Blue & Gold Illustrated to talk about his team���s fast start and their upcoming spring break trip to the West Coast. Blue & Gold Illustrated: They are ranked No. 23 in the Baseball America national poll heading into March. Is that another confidence booster? Aoki: ���The sample size is foolishly small. We should be happy about it. We should be proud of it, but we should also understand there are 50 more games to play. ���If this is the high-water mark of our season, then our season probably wasn���t what we all envisioned it could be.��� Blue & Gold Illustrated: What improvements does this team need to make before Big East season gets started? Aoki: ���The next phase is we���re going to be testing our depth here over the next two weeks. I want to see how we respond to that, and I���m confident that we will. ���These kids have responded to every challenge we���ve thrown out there with them.��� ��� Dan Murphy