Sun Devil baseball coach Pat Murphy gave his impression of the conference along with other musings on Wednesday.
On Pac-10: “It’s a conference of no mercy. I don’t care what the stats say, but it’s proven on paper and in my heart over the last 15 years of doing this that the Pac-10 is, if not the best conference, tied for the best conference. I don’t know who the other conference is that we’d be tied with.”
Murphy cited that while many of the Pac-10 teams have poor nonconference records thus far, upsets have occurred throughout the top conferences in Division-1.
On ASU program: “Everybody thinks that since we’ve won the conference back to back we are like this dominant team. We aren’t a dominant team. We’ve won two conference championships because we’ve grinded it out.”
On inexperience and expectations: “It might be a little unfair to ask them to achieve the goals we have set out because we are so inexperienced. We are literally the most inexperienced team of the top 100. I went through the top 100 teams. Even though it’s unfair, we are still asking them to do it.”
On building winning culture and holding players to high standards: “If you treat [young players] authentically and treat them with love, and [you’re] not just brow-beating them, they get there. I’m a loving guy, I’m sure you can sense that.”
On ASU’s misperceived advantages: “Our run has been incredible if you think about it. There are no advantages at Arizona State anymore. I’m not trying to be a jerk [but] there just isn’t. We don’t have a better stadium than Stanford or Oregon State. We don’t have more scholarships; we have nicer weather, but you don’t get to use the nicer weather in February anymore. The old days are gone.”
