June 4, 2010
ELON COACH MIKE KENNEDY
Opening Statement:
“I just thought that early in the game we were behind in a lot of counts. We couldn’t get the first guy out. I think we did the first couple of innings, but we couldn’t after that. There were three or four innings in a row where the first guy of the inning got on base which put pressure on us. We struggled a little bit to get ahead in counts and they made us pay for it. Give them credit. Going into the game, we heard they weren’t very good offensively, but they didn’t show that today.”
On pitching in the tournament:
“When you come into a Regional, if you expect to advance or go deep in a Regional, you have to pitch well. Jimmy [Reyes] has done well for seven to eight weeks in a row. Unfortunately, he wasn’t as good today. You look at their guy and what he did, and it just goes to show you that pitching will take you where you want to go. The pitcher has a 2.38 ERA, pitching in the SEC. If you look at Alabama and their year and how it got going, they moved the pitcher out of the bullpen and into the starting rotation and I can see why. He threw three pitches for a strike at any point and time in the count. Give him credit, he came out and pitched well. We haven’t been really offensive. We know that. We aren’t the club we were last year in terms of scoring a lot of runs. Being down, six, eight runs is very difficult when we do that.”
JIMMY REYES, Jr., LHP
On his performance on the mound:
“I definitely didn’t have my best stuff today. You can’t have it every time out, but you have to compete and get through it. I wasn’t able to do that today. I fell behind in a lot of counts and it’s tough to overcome that.”
On how it felt on the mound:
“I felt like I did at the beginning of the season when I struggled a little bit. You have to take it one pitch at a time and put whatever just happened behind you. I got caught up in the game a little bit and tried to make perfect pitches. What happens when you try to make perfect pitches is you end up missing out and over the plate.”
SETH CANIPE, Jr., INF
On the team’s offensive performance:
“You have to give credit to their pitcher. He was spotting his fastball and throwing his slider for strikes. We couldn’t get anything going. We couldn’t string anything together. Someone would get a base hit and then the next two guys would strikeout or groundout. We couldn’t get any momentum.”
On playing from behind:
“When you fall behind 9-0, it is tough to stay in there and compete, but we tried. Alabama’s pitcher [Kilcrease] did a good job of spotting his pitches. There is nothing you can do about it.”
