After his team stepped off the field with a 4-3 victory in hand over Matadors 2025 on Tuesday morning at the 16U National Team Championships Arizona, Stacked head coach Kyle Davis had a lot to be happy about.

His group had just beaten one of the better-looking teams in the tournament's early goings in comeback fashion, rallying from an early 3-0 deficit and taking the lead in the fifth inning before sealing the deal with some excellent pitching down the stretch. With the win, Stacked was able to move to a perfect 4-0 at the end of pool play, officially clinching its spot in the playoffs while almost assuredly locking up one of the top seeds when the bracket is finalized later in the day.

Stacked's record is impressive enough, but even beyond just the four wins, the team has been clicking on all cylinders. Its tournament started off with an excellent pitching performance on Sunday evening, with the trio of Tate Morris, Nick Murrey, and Tyler Smith combining to shut out TC Dors 2025 while allowing just three hits the entire game.

The bats carried the way for Stacked the next morning, as they exploded for 16 runs in a blowout victory over GPA. After that, another shutout followed against USA Prime Mountain West 16U, with Ashton Arroyo, Gavin Johnson, and Owen Stelzer repeating the feat that their teammates pulled off the night before.

Concluding this great stretch of games was the aforementioned effort on Tuesday, where the team handled its first bit of adversity as well as it possibly could have. Given all of this, it's understandable that Davis was excited about his team's performance, and after the game's last pitch, he spoke with USA Baseball about the week so far and his group will mentally prepare for the slate of elimination games that are set to begin for them starting on Wednesday:

Q: It was a close one, but you guys managed to pick up another win in this one to end out pool play. What did you think of how you guys played today?

A: It was awesome. We started out sluggish, allowed three in the first with a couple errors and bad coaching starting out the game early, but our boys battled back all day. We came back and scored four and closed it out with Carlos [Barajas] at the end. It was a great team effort, a great job.

Q: That makes it 4-0 for you now, with a couple shutouts and a 16-run effort yesterday. What do you think of the job you guys did to go perfect against this level of competition?

A: I think we're very excited. We just want to play the best. We have some guys that are hungry, and we're ready to go. Overall, we're just really excited to play, and we can't wait until tomorrow to get out here as much as we can. We want to win this thing.

Q: You guys are into the playoff bracket, and you're going to have a pretty high seed going in. How do you prepare your guys for the upcoming elimination games where it's win or go home every single time?

A: It's one of those things where we can't take a pitch off. Every pitch matters, every at-bat, everything matters since it's single elimination. We go home if we lose, but I think our boys are ready. They've fought and they've competed. We've come a long way, and we're just ready to go give it our best shot and see what we can do.

Q: What are you going to tell the guys before those games and what do you think you need to do to make a big run into this thing?

A: Honestly, just stay loose and have a lot of fun in the dugout. We're a family and we compete together. It's one of those things where we can't let the pressure get too big. We want these opportunites, so if we can stay calm, enjoy the game, and have some fun, I think that'll give us our best chance and we'll do a good job.