MORGANTOWN — Larry Lee recognizes the gravity of the moment he’s led Cal Poly into. Twenty-four years spent in the Mustangs’ dugout chasing success in the NCAA tournament certainly wasn’t lost on him last week.
“It’s pretty emotional for me,” Lee said after the Mustangs captured the Los Angeles Regional with a 5-2 victory over St. Mary’s. “It’s a lot of hard work over the years representing Cal Poly. It’s a pretty great moment. It’s a lot of emotion that goes into it for me.”
No doubt.
Cal Poly (39-22) is now one of the upset darlings in the super-regional round of the NCAA tournament, thrown in there along with Troy and Little Rock (Ark.).
As such, Lee is a popular guy these days. He’d rather not have that be the case. After taking a round of questions in the press conference that came after the Mustangs’ Day 2 win against St. Mary’s, he quickly diverted attention elsewhere.
“Hey, how about these guys over here,” Lee said, pointing to his players and shifting the questions to them.
It didn’t take long for those players to speak of Lee’s importance to the Mustangs’ run to the school’s first-ever super regional.
“It means a lot. He’s been here forever,” Cal Poly freshman Gavin Spiridonoff said. “He’s given everything he has to the program. To get him to a super regional for the first time, means so much to our team.”
Lee just may be the textbook definition of perseverance and loyalty, the mid-major coach who decided to stick around and build a program worthy of competing with the bigger schools in the more lucrative leagues.
It may take a Google search to find out where Cal Poly is – it’s located in San Luis Obispo, Calif., on the state’s central coastline – but Lee and the Mustangs are well known in college baseball circles.
The little sisters of the poor the Mustangs are not. There was a win against then No. 1-ranked Texas A&M just last season. In 2014, Cal Poly hosted its own NCAA regional. It beat Oregon in working their way to the finals of the Eugene, Ore. Regional last season. The Mustangs knocked off Virginia Tech this season on its way to winning the Los Angeles Regional.
All of it was steps taken followed by others that now leads them across the country to face West Virginia (43-15) in the super regionals.
“It took a while. It’s just difficult,” Lee said. “It’s difficult out here in the west to get an opportunity to be in a regional. That’s the hard part. To get here, a lot of things have to happen. You have to win the conference tournament. A lot of things have to happen to win a regional.
“We didn’t play the No. 1 team in the country (UCLA), so maybe that made the path for us a little bit different. It is what it is, and we survived. We go on. Our job is not finished. That was the last message to our team. Let’s get onto the next. There are other goals that we want to add.”
It is a program, under Lee, that has featured 13 All-Americans and he’s coached 90 players who were drafted, including first-rounder Brooks Lee in 2022.
And he’s got an offensive-charged team, as of late. The Mustangs put up 25 runs in their three games to win the Los Angeles Regional, with catcher Ryan Tayman batting .500 with two home runs in the regional.
“We made more mental adjustments, it wasn’t too much physical,” Lee said about his offense. “You try to keep things simple and not over-complicate things. They’re good ball players, it’s a good offense. You just need to have the right mindset.”
