St. John's University Athletics
Throwing Strikes With Anthony Varvaro
4/13/2005 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
April 13, 2005
Every week through the end of the regular season, junior pitcher Anthony Varvaro will chronicle the 2005 St. John's baseball season in a journal on www.RedStormSports.com.
Q: You've been named BIG EAST Pitcher of the Week twice this season. What does it mean to you earning honors like that?
To tell you the truth, receiving honors is good and it's nice to be recognized, but I'm pitching to win games here as a team. I'm glad things are going well for me, but I'm just as glad that we're winning games as a team and getting contributions from everyone on the staff, guys like Jim Wladyka, Rob Delaney, Justin Muir and Craig. Top to bottom, we've done a good job and that's what means the most to me. Being recognized individually is nice, but as long as we keep on winning, that's all that really matters.
The team has gotten off to a great start in the BIG EAST so far, what does do for the team's confidence?
Every weekend, we have great confidence. We're playing together as a team and that's been the biggest key. We just can't go out there and think we're good enough to win. We've got to compete. We know we can beat anybody, but we need to come out and play everyday.
This week, the team earned some national recognition and was ranked among the top-35 teams in the country. What does that mean to the guys on the team?
I don't know who pays attention to it or not. Being recognized as a nationally-ranked team is good and all, but the ultimate goal is to win our conference first and then get to the Regionals. The rankings are just numbers. We need to go out play every day. As fast as we got up there, we can go off of it. We need to play hard every day.
Speaking of numbers, the offense has been putting some big numbers up lately. Are you surprised by that? Am I surprised?
Yeah. I've never seen anything like it. It makes for a long game, but we're hitting the ball really well right now and I hope that continues. We knew our offense was capable of putting numbers up, but to see these types of numbers is amazing. It's nice because it makes it easier on the pitching staff.
The team heads to West Virginia this weekend. They won two of three games last year, and it was the only conference series the team lost, does that make it any more significant?
That was the only series we lost and most of the guys on the team know it. I know they're a really good hitting team. I think our pitching staff is going to have a big challenge this weekend. Sure, we're looking to win because of what they did to us last year and obviously, we want to redeem ourselves. We'll probably have a little extra "oomph" in our system this weekend, but when it boils down to it, we want to win at least two every weekend. Winning games on the weekends gets you to the BIG EAST Tournament.
