Georgia Tech head coach Danny Hall
Opening Statement
Hall: Just a tough night, quite honestly, all the way around. Probably a game of inches. We were within an eyelash and probably up for interpretation whether we hit a two-run homer to cut the lead to one, and then just had a hard time maybe getting them out with guys in scoring position. I will give them credit; they did a great job, particularly Jarrett getting them off to a great start, got him down two strikes and kind of hung a breaking ball and he didn’t miss it, and that got them off to a 3-0 start, and then Tresh has hit us all year, so you give them credit. Hit a big double early on and then hit a home run later and then a home run late. Hard to defend those. You tip your cap to them, and just wasn’t meant to be, quite honestly.
Q. I imagine if someone would have said to you your pitchers are only going to allow five hits going into the ninth inning, you would have felt pretty good about your chances.
Hall: Yeah, probably. I mean, this is a really good hitting club. They’re red hot. They’re playing very well. Highfill is an outstanding pitcher. But our walks got us in trouble. It seemed like we would walk a guy and then they would do some damage to us, and that was kind of the common theme all night is that we would put some guys on by not making them hit their way on, and then they did some damage when we made just not good enough pitches to get them out.
Neither team had many hits kind of going into the game late. They got a few late on us, but you’re right, we just got to eliminate walks, and that’s easier said than done. But give them credit. They took advantage of everything we gave them.
Q. It seemed like you had a lot of balls hit on the nose. Some of them turned into double plays. Like you said, kind of one of those things, I guess, but what do you make of the way you were at least getting contact against Highfill?
Hall: Well, I thought we were very competitive with him. I haven’t seen the replay on the home run, but I think that’s quite a debate between maybe what the umpire saw in replay and what the TV showed. I mean, everybody that saw it on TV is telling me it was a home run. But the umpire saw something different, so they overturned it.
But you’re right; we hit into I know two double plays in the first five innings, but both balls we hit into double plays on were hit pretty hard. Just one of those nights. Sometimes you’ve got to be lucky and the ball has got to bounce your way. Tonight just didn’t bounce our way.
Q. What are the positives you take away from the game? It looks like Luke Bartnicki is back on track again. He had some pretty good innings there.
Hall: Yeah, really good tournament. For sure maybe close to five innings I don’t think gave up any runs but threw the ball really well. That’s really good for us moving forward is to kind of get back him on track. Maxwell threw the ball good on Thursday, and honestly Grissom threw the ball good, just when he made a mistake, they made him pay, and he probably just walked a few too many to kind of make it easier for them to score.
There was a lot of good things that happened for us this week. Now we’ve just got to get back to Atlanta, rest a little bit, find out where we’re going on Monday and get ready to play in an NCAA regional.
Q. I would think that kind of seeds for this game were sewn particularly pitching-wise by having to go 12?
Hall: Well, maybe a little. But we had — Marquis was rested and Bartnicki was kind of rested. I don’t think that really had an impact on how we would have tried to pitch this game, and if we would have been fortunate enough to win, we would have pitched Archer tomorrow in the championship. I kind of think we had it lined up good, just didn’t get that opportunity to play.
Q. I asked you the other day about seeding, and as you were saying you don’t know, but does a No. 2 seed feel like something that should be coming your way on Monday?
Hall: I have no idea. Honestly, the — that’s all I’ll say. There’s plenty I’d want to say, but I’m not going to say it. I just think we have a great league, and so we’ll just — it’s not in our hands, it’s in the fate of the committee, and we’ll see where they see us stacking up, and we’ll go from there.
Q. You look at Marquis today and I guess what you saw, he strikes out the side in the first inning, then runs into trouble in the second. I guess that’s just part of being a freshman and trying to learn the ropes of pitching in the ACC?
Hall: No question. You know, he’s just got to be more consistent with where his pitches go. Like I said earlier, we had Jarrett with two strikes on him. Looked like we were going to get out of that jam, and he hung a breaking ball to him, and like a good hitter, Jarrett didn’t miss it. He hit a double down the left field line, cleared the bases, so it went from looking like we were out of there 0-0 and now we’re down 3-0.
He’ll learn. He’s got great aptitude. He’s got a great attitude. He’s a hard worker, and he’s just going to do nothing but get better. It’s a great experience for him tonight, face a really, really good NC State team that’s red hot, and he’ll learn from this.
Georgia Tech shortstop Luke Waddell
Q. What was your take on today’s game? I know you guys stayed in it for most of the game and you just were inches away a couple of times from taking the lead or tying the game up.
Waddell: Yeah, you know, I just think a couple things didn’t go our way. That’s sometimes how it goes. But yeah, we hung in there. We grinded their pitcher through really well. We had a lot of good ABs, hit the ball hard a lot, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out. That’s kind of what happened today.
Q. Did you feel like you had a pretty good plan? Seemed like you guys’ lineup were hitting the ball pretty well off of Highfill.
Waddell: Yeah, you know, I think every game we take a different approach, and I think we had a pretty good plan. But he had good stuff. He made a lot of good pitches. I mean, I don’t really know how many. He just got people out, and you can’t really ask for anything else. We had good ABs. We had some good 3-2 counts. DeLeo had a really good AB that he grounded out on I think and we had a lot of hard-hit balls. That’s just baseball some days, and there’s not really anything you can do about it, so it kind of just sucks.
Q. I imagine now the plan is to go home, regroup, sit down Monday, see where you’re going to go and start from scratch?
Waddell: Yeah, I think we’re leaving tomorrow morning, but yeah, that’s the plan. I mean, we kind of talked about that after the game on the field. The season is not over yet, and the end goal is to win a national championship. We can still do that. Yeah, just got to reset, get back to Atlanta, have a few good practices and see where we’re going to go, and then regionals are a lot of fun, so I think everybody is looking forward to it, but yeah, just got to reset, go back to work and get ready for next weekend.
Q. I don’t know how much you pay attention to projections, things of that sort, but is there a team you’d want to face in a region?
Waddell: No, not really. I mean, I see things on Twitter, but I don’t put much into it anyways because at the end of the day the selection committee or whatever their name is is going to do whatever they want to do. Anywhere we’re going to go, we’re going to play [three] really good baseball teams. I mean, when we hosted two years ago, even Florida A&M, they had a really good arm and a really good team and we were the 1 seed. Now probably being a 2 seed or a 3 seed somewhere, we’re going to have a good team to play, and obviously you’ve got to beat whatever team is hosting.
You know, anywhere you go you’re going to be playing good teams, and if you really want to win the national championship you’re going to have to beat good teams, too.
