May 23, 2008
2008 ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIP
Game 5
#1 Miami 15, #5 Georgia Tech 12
May 22, 2008
GEORGIA TECH HEAD COACH Danny Hall
On the ballgame…
“That was a tough ballgame to lose. I’m proud of our guys, the way they battled back all night. It looked like the game was set up perfectly with (Brad) Rulon coming in, but they are a very good hitting ball club and the margin for error is very slim. We just made too many mistakes to their hitters and they just made us pay every time we made a mistake by hitting the ball out of the ballpark. I thought we walked too many guys but again, give those guys a lot of credit. They proved they are a great team and a great hitting team in particular.”
On the option of walking Dave DiNatale in the ninth…
“We considered it, but you didn’t want to walk the winning run in. I felt like we were going to pitch him tough, and we tried to do that. We just didn’t do that and we didn’t make the pitches we needed to make on him.”
On the Miami lineup…
“Every guy on their lineup has the ability to hit the ball out of the ballpark, and they proved that tonight. They had some big hits when they needed them. (Yonder) Alonso hurt us bad early and (David) DiNatale kinda shocked us, to be honest, in hitting the two home runs. We really just made mistakes on both the pitches he hit. To give him credit, he hit them both out of the park.”
GEORGIA TECH’S Jason Haniger (Jr. – C)
On how Georgia Tech hit the ball…
“I think we did a good job of getting ahead in the count and not swinging at bad pitches for the most part. We had guys like Jeff (Ussery) coming off the bench, getting hits and for Luke (Murton) to wear one like that and guys competing. We knew we had to have a different mindset coming out against the No. 1 team in the nation, and we knew that we needed to come out and play our best baseball. We went out there and gave it our all, and unfortunately we came out on the losing end.”
GEORGIA TECH’S Jeff Rowland (Fr. – OF )
On the wild pitch…
“I was rounding third and I really just wanted to get in a good position to score. The ball just kicked away the right distance, and I was just trying to get in there to get us ahead.”
