Upon his return to Rocky Top, LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri is offering an apology.

During the 2021 season, Mainieri made strong comments about the atmosphere his LSU squad encountered getting swept at Tennessee. With the Tigers and Volunteers clashing in a Super Regional series this weekend, Mainieri apologized for his previous comments.

Here’s what Mainieri told reporters, per NBC 33/FOX 44’s Brian Holland:

“I want to apologize for those comments I made a couple months ago…I didn’t, in any way mean to criticize the people at Tennessee. I stuck my foot in my mouth,” Mainieri said, per NBC 33/FOX 44’s Brian Holland.

Per Holland, Mainieri said he was commenting more on how his players handled their first SEC road series of the season.

“There’s nothing that was being said that you wouldn’t find at any other SEC ballpark…they needed to learn how to handle that,” Mainieri said during his media availability.

“The people here at Tennessee are wonderful.”

In April, Mainieri got the attention of Vol Twitter with comments he made during a radio interview.

“It was an extremely hostile environment. Nasty fans, nasty. They were into Tre’ Morgan’s head,” Mainieri said on the show. “I mean, they were on him from the moment he walked out on that field. It was a difficult situation.

“The umpires, there were a lot of calls that went against us and they were having to deal with that. The other team was not handling things with a lot of class, quite frankly. It was an environment that those kids were in for the very first time and it was very difficult.”