Arizona baseball: Why the Wildcats use social media to celebrate each win

Let's get to the bottom of the team picture tweets

Plenty of things changed when the Arizona Wildcats coaching staff changed last summer...how practices are conducted, how the pitching staff was handled, how games were scheduled. An emphasis was put on recruiting and weight lifting like had never been seen before in Tucson.

But to the casual fan, one of the changes is a bit more obvious.

The social media game.

8-3 Cats! #CREED http://pic.twitter.com/hgzKvGlHfH

— Jay Johnson (@UACoachJ) May 26, 2016

Throughout the year, head coach Jay Johnson posts a team picture on his account with the hashtag #CREED after every win. It gets retweeted by all the Arizona Athletics accounts and what not, and spreads like wildfire through the Arizona internet forest.

But no one really knew what any of it meant or what the purpose of it was. So, as we head to the postseason, let's take care of those questions once and for all.

The idea of the team picture started back during Johnson's days at San Diego under Toreros head coach Rich Hill.

"We did it at San Diego after home wins," Johnson explained. "And then we would just send it out to a donor or a supporter of the program. Then when I went to Nevada, we started taking one after every win and posting it."

"It's really just about respecting winning and how hard it is to win, especially when you play the schedule like we do," he continued. "One win against an Oregon State should be celebrated, let alone three. Or Cal, or Stanford, or Arizona State, and our players are into it. They like it, and I want them to feel good about what they accomplish and there's some togetherness part to it."

"And if recruits like it because we put it on social media, all the better."

"It's kind of a neat deal," assistant coach Sergio Brown added. "It's hard to win games, so after you win games you tell the guys 'Hey, good job. We did this right, we did that right' but that picture, I think the guys have bought into that this year. I've never been around something like that, but when you're trying to build something you want to give guys something to identify with, and that's something we've totally identified with."

"Hey, we win a game, we take a picture."

So that takes care of the picture. What about #CREED?

"Well it's the team creed," Brown explained. "And so it's about our mission statement a little bit, so that's what the hashtag CREED is all about. It's the mission statement, so that's what the players know."

There it is. The number of questions I've received because of this new tradition has been kind of hilarious, so hopefully this takes care of that once and for all.

The more often Coach Johnson is posting a team picture, the better off Arizona fans are.

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