Austin Strickland shares how he has evolved as a pitcher

Kentucky pitcher Austin Strickland shared how he has improved as a pitcher for the Wildcats recently.

He explained this ahead of the Super Regional against LSU. There, Kentucky is likely going to rely on Strickland to help send the Wildcats to Omaha.

“I think just knowing myself,” Austin Strickland said. “Knowing my pitches, knowing my delivery. I’m not really fighting myself anymore. I’m not really fighting my mentality, my body, anything like that.”

Strickland is a junior at Kentucky and has put together a solid season, improving as time has gone on.

“So, there’s a really high level of confidence that when I go out there, I know what my pitches are gonna do, I know how my body moves, and I can repeat it really well at this point. So, I’m very confident when I go out there, knowing that I know what’s going to happen, and if I don’t know what’s going to happen, I’m not gonna be very confident. Just working on that with Coach [Dan] Roszel has really helped me to get to this point.”

During the Lexington Regional, Austin Strickland took the ball against West Virginia and set the tone early. His coach, Nick Mingione, later praised him for that early-inning success.

“He throws three pitches for a strike. It’s mid-90s with a mid-80s breaking ball and then the changeup,” Mingione said on the ESPNU broadcast. “I think that anytime you’ve got that stuff, you know the movement — but throwing three pitches for a strike with that kind of movement is making it tough on them.”

Kentucky is confident and hungry going into the Super Regional

Kentucky is heading down to Baton Rouge to play LSU in the Super Regional. Ahead of that Nick Mingione and Austin Strickland expressed their confidence going into the series.

“I can tell you this, I wouldn’t want to do it with another group of guys,” Mingione said. “This is a special team. A bunch of competitive people. Their term is ‘dogs’ and I would agree. They’re a bunch of dogs and I love being their coach.”

Austin Strickland praised LSU but said that Kentucky is coming into the Super Regional with tons of confidence.

“Going into LSU, we’ve been there a time and they’re a great team,” Austin Strickland said. “They were No. 1 in the country for a really long time and I have nothing but respect for them. We’re going to go in and give it our best shot and I think these last few weeks we’ve been playing pretty good baseball and especially this weekend our offense really turned it on so I’m pretty confident going down there.”