May 29, 2009
SOUTHERN MISS POSTGAME QUOTES
Head Coach Corky Palmer
Opening Statement:
“We battled just like we did in the conference tournament last week. It was one of the wildest games I’ve been in, in my career. The guys never gave in, hung in there and we finally got them out. It was a good win to stay in the winner’s bracket.”
“It was a good win, we’ve just got to push on to tomorrow. The wind played a major factor and carried the balls out of the park.”
“We’ve got to stay in the winner’s bracket because we just aren’t that deep on the mound.”
“Elon had hurt us all day and those left handed sticks kept coming up and up and up and we couldn’t get them out. Our left handed pitching was walking their left handed hitters, and that was the only thing that I got upset with. That’s not good, and it hurt us.”
“I really felt like we had to outscore them when Todd McInnis couldn’t make it any longer than he did.”
“I knew we had a game when I looked at their dugout and they didn’t flinch when we went up 8-0. I’ve had teams like that a long time ago – they believed the entire time they were in it and started chipping away. Even in the ninth inning, they didn’t give up. There’s no question this is one of the top two offenses we’ve played this year. Wind, or no wind, their bats are fast – they are just good. When you’ve got righty, lefty, righty, it’s just hard to get them out.”
# 14, Bo Davis, Outfielder
“We’ve been with coach for five years and we just want to keep going in this tournament. One game at a time, we can never give up.
#38, Joey Archer, First Baseman
“It was definitely up and down, up and down. We had to come back and play hard every inning. We have to keep hitting, that’s all we can do.
ELON POSTGAME QUOTES
Head Coach Mike Kennedy
Opening Statement:
“Pitching and defense wins ballgames. If you never believed in that, all you had to do was watch tonight – 15 runs, a ton of offense and we’re leaving not feeling too good about ourselves right now. All the hype has been on us as an offensive club, what we do, hit home runs. To win something like this and put yourself in position to play for a championship in a regional, you have to pitch and play defense, and we didn’t do either one today. I thought we had a big inning where we got right back in it and tied it up with three in the sixth, then they (Southern Miss) gets a couple of ground balls – a ground ball base hit to left; we don’t hustle to the baseball and the guy takes an extra base when the ball kicks away. We don’t hustle to the ball again, and two guys get into scoring position. So instead of minimizing the damage there, we let them get guys in scoring position. I thought that was a huge inning. We obviously didn’t get a quality start – eight runs in the second inning. It’s tough to battle back from. We put a lot of energy into doing that. We actually got the lead, but we didn’t pitch or play defense when we needed to.”
On the decision to not start P Jimmy Reyes:
“He threw twice last week in our conference tournament, and now he was on short rest, and we are trying to get him as much rest as we can. If you look at the matchups, Southern Miss has a more right-handed-dominant lineup compared to a Georgia Tech or Georgia State, whoever we are playing in the next game. So the matchup was good. He needed rest, to be quite honest with you. If you do your research or your homework, Tom Porter has been our best guy for six weeks. He’s been really good. I don’t know if he didn’t handle the pressure today, or what, he just wasn’t good today. I don’t second-guess that move at all.”
On going to P Thomas Girdwood in the ninth inning:
“He’s second in the country in saves. He runs into trouble here and there, but he’s our guy and we’re going to go to him. I just thought he was a little too jacked up. He had a little too much energy, and he was overthrowing and couldn’t calm himself down. The result was I think he elevated some pitches and made some mistakes, but you have to give them (Southern Miss) credit. They put the bat on the ball.”
On how they can recover from the loss:
“We have a veteran club. There is nothing like experience and older guys. If we were young, I’d say we would have a hard time tomorrow, but we have a bunch of old guys. I’ve said this a million times: It hurts us (the coaches) more than it hurts them (the players). Those kids are 19, 20, 21 years old, and they’ll forget about it in a couple of hours, and they’ll be ready to go tomorrow. The ones who suffer are the coaches. We’ll go home, and it will kill us tonight, but they’ll forget about it after dinner.”
On how frustrating it was to lose after coming back:
“Our offense did everything it could to win that game for us, everything. We got a lead in the ninth, and we finally got to the other side and we can’t stop them. So, it was very frustrating.”
#4 Bennett Davis, 2B
On how frustrating the result was, despite his three homers:
“It’s no more frustrating than if I would have gone 0 for 4. You want to go out there and win every day, and a tough battle like that when it goes back-and-forth with the lead changes, no matter how good of a game you had, it’s tough to lose. … I saw the ball well today.”
On having the patience to come back after being down 8-0:
“Anytime you’re down eight runs, you have to have that mindset. Our offense is pretty talented, one through nine, and we think that anytime we can put up a six-spot or an eight-spot. But of course, we just chipped away, and that’s the sign of a pretty veteran club, and a good club, as well. I’m very proud about how our offense came back today.”
