Clint Myers gazes down at his College World Series Championship ring.
As he rotates it around this thumb and finger, the first-year Auburn softball coach looks out to right field, where his team is stretching before practice.
"They're starting to believe," Myers says. "If we can get a couple more big series wins, this could be something special."
Auburn won 30 games all last season.
Now, only 38 games into Myers first season as head coach, the team has one more win than they did at season's end last year.
"I knew we'd be better," Myers said. "I'm not sure what our record is. I only worry about the next game, not the past ones."
Myers, who won two College World Series while at Arizona State, preaches on three basic keys to success: good defense, good pitching and timely hitting.
"We have a pretty simple formula," Myers said. "We don't play the opposition. We play the game. We've got four or five kids playing really well, but we know we've got to get nine kids playing really well in order to do the things that we want."
The Tigers took two of three games in a weekend series against No.10 Kentucky, dropping the second game of a Sunday double-header.
"For us, it was just another series in preparation," Myers said. "We let the third one slip away. In our opinion, we should have had that."
Even after the Kentucky series, the tough stretch only gets tougher.
In their next two series, the Tigers will take on No. 6 Florida and No.8 Missouri back to back.
The Missouri series will kick off April 11 and will be the first home series for Auburn since the March 21-23 series win against Mississippi State.
"Tim [Walton, Florida head coach] does a great job," Myers said. "Each of these three game series is going to tell us a little bit more of what this team needs to go in order to get where it wants to be."
After the Missouri series closes, the tigers will head to Montgomery on April 16 to play their only game on the year against cross-state rival, No. 1 Alabama.
The extremely tough stretch of road will come to an end with two more tough weekend series to close out April with three games in Athens against No. 2 Georgia, then a home series with No. 11 Texas A&M.
"The SEC is full of post-season competition," Myers said. "This is a Super Regional every single weekend."
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