If you want to talk about pitch visualization with Brian Curley, be prepared to take a deep dive.

For Curley, the subject goes much deeper than simply trying to hit the mitt of catcher Henry Hunter.

It’s actually visualizing the path of the ball, be it on the mound at Foley Field or his apartment at home.

“I have a target that I look at that kind of helps me get an idea of where my eyes want to be,” Curley said. “Other than that, I just, I'll sit in my room and just think about pitching. It's like, kind of not just visualizing the ball flight, but visualizing what, what it feels like.”

But that’s not all.

With Curley, to effectively visualize as a pitcher, you must be able to turn it into a pitch that you’re able to execute.

“It’s vivid, if that makes any sense,” Curley said. “It's more vivid than just a picture. It's, you have to use multiple senses.”

If it sounds complicated, well, it is.

“When I'm visualizing on the mound, I have a whole picture,” Curley said. “It’s like a GIF almost. I stand behind the mound, and I get my sign. I don't want to say see it, but it's like, I see the pitch before I throw it, and then I turn it into a feel. Then it comes down to, alright, I can execute this pitch; I’ve already done it before.”

Color Kolten Smith impressed.

Smith said he’s watched the way Curley goes about his business, even though he smiled, that he’s not quite ready to take visualization to the same extreme.

“He does a lot of work off the field with visualization, and it translates to the mound,” Smith said. “I do a little bit. I’ve got my routine, but not nearly as much as him.”

The way skipper Wes Johnson sees it, it’s whatever works.

One of Johnson’s strengths as a coach is his ability to get his players to believe in themselves.

“We work on that a lot, right? I mean, it's first you got to think you can be good, right?” Johnson said. “You’ve got to go practice at whatever you think you can be good at. You’ve got to see it, right? Seeing it is what I think is what's really helped him.”

Curley’s numbers would indicate so.

The former reliever turned starter is now Georgia’s Friday night starter with a multi-pitch mix that includes a fastball that reached 100 mph earlier this year.

He owns a respectable ERA of 3.43 with 55 strikeouts in 44.2 innings. Opponents are hitting just .155 against him.

Visualization has been part of Curley’s athletic background for a large part of his life.

However, it wasn’t baseball where he got his start. It was golf, where his dad was nearly a scratch performer.

“When he was teaching me how to putt, he's like, before you putt, like, I want you to have an image of the putt dropping into the cup. I want you to be able to hear it in your mind,” Curley said. “He was like before you hit the putt, close your eyes and completely experience the whole putt from start to finish, and then just go out and do it. Then you just flush the result. That's the exact thing that I do for pitching.”

He's grateful that Johnson's allowing him the opportunity to do so.

“There’s been a lot of, a lot of different opportunities to improve,” Curley said. “Especially here at Georgia, where I'm given that freedom, that creative freedom that I like talking about. Wes has been very open with us and gives us all of the opportunities to do things how we want to do them.”