The Florida State softball team is back on the road and will face a challenge in No. 4 Clemson on Thursday, with a doubleheader beginning at 3 p.m. (ACC Network Extra) and 6 p.m. (ACC Network). Friday's game is set for ESPN2 at 7 p.m.
Just the fact that FSU (29-7) and Clemson (36-1) are highly ranked and facing off in the regular season was enough to attract two national broadcasts.
Below are some thoughts from coach Lonni Alameda, and the full video is below:
(How the ACC is getting stronger and how Clemson has emerged) "Clemson was able to build, and then we hit COVID. And then there was a lot of extra-year kids. So a lot of kids that had their fifth year, and had college experience to be able to come in and give that to the team. So when you start fresh, you can train some freshmen like they did. And then you can grab some very experienced players to come in and help out. So it was the perfect storm for them to be able to build something super cool. "Duke, it's really hard to get transfers into Duke. So that had to be a different build. I think Marissa (Young) has gone with a lot of fundamentals, deep with pitching. It's just family softball for them. Her whole family plays softball. Her husband leads the away in a club team. ... I'd like to say that when we won the championship, administration and coaches are like, 'Oh, man, you can do it. Someone opened the door a little bit.' And then people brought their own flavor in here. And the way to build it. So perfect storm of a lot of things. This weekend is going to be amazing for us. It's going to be sold-out crowds. Clemson is all out to take it away from Florida State. Florida State's all excited to go against Clemson. It's our first time there. To have that in our conference now is really special."
(This is the first time FSU is playing a top-5 ACC team on the road) "John Rittman (Clemson's coach) and I coached together at Stanford. So it's kind of fun because we have this relationship of build. We built Stanford from nothing to going to a World Series together. It was kind of fun. I know when John came into the league, he called me and he's like, 'Can I bring my team down there?' Before they even started playing. 'Can we see what you guys are doing?' It's a very amicable relationship and it's all about softball. So it is pretty neat to see that part of it and special and we used to have to beg a lot for people to cover us and talk about us and it's not like that anymore. And of course, TV has helped that. I used to be upset all the time like every time the SEC would come out, and the SEC Network would be like, 'SEC is the best softball.' And I'm like, 'Man, just put a chip on your shoulder. We got good softball down here ... Now we're proving that in the conference."
At the 5-minute mark, Alameda discusses pitching strategy
At the 7-minute mark, thoughts on Mack Leonard fighting through a slump with her hard work in the cages
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