2002 ACC Baseball Tournament
North Carolina vs. Georgia Tech
North Carolina head coach Mike Fox:
“Well, it’s obviously disappointing that we lost. I thought our players played very hard, not just today, but in the whole tournament. We played three really hard fought games, and unfortunately the last two days we didn’t come out on the right side. I give credit to Georgia Tech for coming back, we knew they would. They are an outstanding team. We knew we had to pitch. I think it came down to the battle of the bullpens and theirs was better than ours today. (Jeff) Watchko, he is good.”
“I think my team showed their resiliency during the last inning with two out and nobody on. We kept fighting.”
“We get to play next weekend, and that is a good thing. This time last year, I couldn’t say that, so I am happy about that.”
Georgia Tech head coach Danny Hall:
“We got off to a rough start. They jumped out on us, and then we battled back into the game. Then, they jumped out on us again, and then we battled back and took the lead. I thought we had some great at-bats to get back in the game. We had some big hits to get back in the game, and then Jeff Watchko put up four zeros late in the game. That was really the difference in the game as he was able to squash their momentum and keep the lead for us. I think that was really the story of the game.”
“I thought the game today was a definite gut check, character check, to get that behind that early. We had our ace out on them and they rattled him, I mean they hit him hard. To dig down and get back in the game says a lot about our team. You look at (Jeff) Watchko and he is now 11-1, and he has been the MVP of our pitching staff whether it has been coming in in the middle of a game like he did or coming in late in the game, he has been outstanding for us. He is a big reason that we are playing tomorrow and that we now have 46 wins. I can’t say enough about how he has performed for our team.”
(On Kyle Bakker) “He has had some soreness in his shoulder. He was just totally out of rhythm today. I’d like to have thrown him Wednesday, but he was a little sore so we saved him for a couple of days. He said he was okay, but I just think he wasn’t in rhythm today which is unusual for him.”
(On Florida State) “They’re on fire right now. They’re hitting the ball and playing great defense. They’re deserving of everything they have received. But, it’s baseball, and you don’t know what’s going to happen. We wanted to get to Saturday, now we’ve got a chance.”
