Q&A with Southern Miss RHP Colby Allen

BIG Gold Nation had the opportunity to sit and chat with Southern Miss starting pitcher Colby Allen before the first scrimmage of fall baseball. Colby opens up about the offseason, adding pitches, the draft process, and what led him to come back for another season. A big thanks to Colby who, like Russo, is a fine young man amd great ambassador for the program.

Heath: Let’s talk about the offseason for a bit. Can you talk about the process of coming back after the draft. Where were you mentally? Was it difficult to come back, was it difficult not to go, or was it pretty easy with the situation that Southern Miss had presented?

Colby: It was pretty easy, leading up to it after the season, I was kinda 50/50 and I was really thinking more 70/30 that I was probably gone. After Miami I really thought I wasn’t going to play again, but as the summer went on, I started hearing stuff about the draft, then the chances started going back to 50/50, and I didn’t really know what I was going to do. Then I had an idea of what I was going to do after the draft about two-three days before the draft, I had a pretty good idea of where I was going to end up. It wasn’t really stressful until the end of the draft, that’s where it kind of hit and it’s awesome, the process was awesome. It’s pretty nerve racking, but it was fun, it was a cool experience to deal with that, being a 21 year-old, so it was pretty neat.

Heath: Has the collective, with the way rules are now, made it easier for guys like you to come back? Does it make it easier for guys like you to come back to raise your draft stock by becoming a starter?

Colby: Our collective does a great job, I think we’re one of the luckiest baseball programs. They’re always straight up and all for us. If we ever have a question or if there’s anything we need done, these guys are always the first ones to be there to do anything we need if we have questions. It made it pretty easy, they’re really easy to deal with, coaches are really easy to deal with. It was a pretty easy decision for me to come back without a doubt. I grew up here, and that chance to come back here and do whatever I needed to do for the team this year, it was an easy decision.

Heath: This offseason after that whirlwind, did you just kind of take a break and just settle down? A lot of guys earlier in their college careers play summer ball, but later on guys take a break and reset the computer so to speak?

Colby: I can’t really do that, I’m one of those type of guys who needs to do something, I feel like I’m going to be behind the curb. I would just workout at my house, I took roughly a month off throwing. I felt lost without throwing a baseball you know, I always at the end of a season look forward, about mid-june, mid-july where I pick back up, so that’s really a month. I feel lost when I don’t really do anything baseball wise, but that was really it. After Miami beat us on the 1st of June, by July 4th, I was back to throwing so that month was really the only time I took off from baseball.

Heath: Coming back to be a starter this year, talk about something that you needed to work on as a pitcher to become a better starter. Have you worked on another pitch, what are the things you’ve worked on this offseason to transition to a full-time starter?

Colby: So the big thing for me was adding that changeup, that was a big stepping stone that I worked on all summer to really just throw it and now working with Coach Ledje and Coach Oz, now I’ve gotten the change up as strong as my sinker and slider, so that was pretty big for me to get it going this early. I wasn’t really expecting to have that changeup and have that much feel with it this early. About two weeks ago I started to really throw it whenever I wanted to, wherever I wanted to. Now we’re mixing in a 4-seam, so we’ve gone from having two pitches to having four in two weeks. Heath:

That’s what you have to have as a starter if you want to get drafted? Instead of having a two pitch mix, you have a four pitch mix? Two pitches worked against Mississippi State.

Colby: Right, it’s pretty tough to start only having two pitches, thankfully my slider has been pretty good for me so I can get away with some stuff when I did start the past two years. I could throw the slider and the sinker wherever I wanted to, so that was enough to keep them off-balance. But it was pretty tough getting to that four to six inning in games.

Heath: This is going to be your last year at Southern Miss, what is the message that you want to tell the fanbase about you, the team, everything together. What does the fanbase mean to you?

Colby: It’s kind of like beating a dead horse, everybody in this locker room and this baseball facility says that we have the best fans in the country and we really do. We go off into the season and we see everybody else’s best, but it’s nothing comparable. You get here and in midweeks, we’re playing somebody from way-off and we still have almost 6,000 people here for midweek. Especially when we have Mississippi State or Ole Miss, or if there’s someone big coming in on the weekend, it’s more packed. It’s awesome for us, and as soon as the gates open, there’s 300 people down the 16oz Lounge and the Roost, which is pretty awesome. That’s pretty special to us, as players and coaches we don’t take that lightly, that’s pretty special for us to have that support.

Heath: Have you ever talked to opposing pitchers who are warming up in the bullpen? How bad is it?

Colby: I’ve had some buddies down there, and they don’t have too much fun to say that, I’ve had some pitching down there, and I’ve had some just running down to bring something to the dugout and they even get harassed you know?