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NCAA MEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIESJune 17, 2014Kyle BacakJim SchlossnagleOMAHA, NEBRASKA Virginia – 3 THE MODERATOR: Joined now by TCU. TCU has been the designated home team for Thursday's game against Ole Miss. Head coach Jim Schlossnagle is joined by Kyle Bacak and Brandon Finnegan. Coach, begin with an opening statement, please? COACH SCHLOSSNAGLE: Obviously great ballgame. Impressive pitching from both teams. Congratulations to Virginia. We're proud of our team for the way we competed. We've been through these before, and we're planning on making this game part of our story for the next week or so. Q. Jim, just there late in the game, just talk about kind of the bout between Nick Howard and Riley Ferrell. That was pretty special. COACH SCHLOSSNAGLE: Yeah, premium arms, it's hard to get upset at your offense when you're facing that kind of pitching I've got to be careful here before I say some things about this ballpark that I'll regret. It's just a travesty what we've done to college baseball. But it's very impressive by Howard. Very impressive by Ferrell. Very impressive by Teakell. Very impressive by Lewicki. I thought Brandon, once he caught his rhythm was really good. And I thought their starter, we missed some opportunities early. We had some poor fundamentals early in the game on defense, and that cost us a run. But, yeah, I mean, the pitching was smothering. Then you add in the park and the conditions, and it's not a good recipe for scoring. Q. Coach, how does the pitching‑‑ you went through some arms tonight and a lot of pitching. How does that affect you as far as going forward and playing Ole Miss? COACH SCHLOSSNAGLE: You know, obviously, Ferrell and Teakell not available, but I feel comfortable as long as we can have somebody go out there the way Preston and Brandon did, pitch deep into the game, whether it be Kipper or Alexander, not sure who we're going to pitch. But if those guys can go out there and give us a great game and get us to the next day and have those guys have two days rest, they'll be ready to go by the time we get to Friday. But I'd venture to say you won't see the last two pitchers that pitched for us. Q. Kyle, I guess when you look at, for instance, Kevin, some of the balls he hit tonight, when those balls just kind of died out there. As hitters, does that kind of keep your confidence level down quite a bit when you see guys hit the ball like that and it just dies? KYLE BACAK: It does to an extent. But what we kind of base our offense off is quality at‑bats and hard contacts, quality at‑bats. So for us, it's a win. Kevin did. He squared some balls off that. Most places are extra base hits and maybe even home runs, something like that. But I think we hit a lot of balls hard. But as an offense, you can't dwell on it. You just have to keep pushing on. Q. Are games like this harder to bounce back from when you lose tough extra inning games? COACH SCHLOSSNAGLE: I think if we had to play tomorrow it's certainly tougher. We've been a part of three this year, 15, 11, and a 22, or whatever today was, and we're 3‑1 in those ballgames. So we'll find out. We bounce back from the wins pretty well. But having the day off certainly helps. But I'm confident. We're a resilient bunch, and we just so happened to lose a close one today. We'll be back ready to play Thursday night. Q. Jim, what was your thinking on the pinch hit, Fox for Suiter? COACH SCHLOSSNAGLE: You know, the guy that they had in there, what is his name? Mayberry? We were getting really good swings on him, so when Jerrick was up, we weren't going to bunt because we were just getting good swings and it's so hard to even score from second base on a single. So we were hoping for another base hit, maybe get to first base. So when they brought in Lewicki, just took a shot. Fox has gotten two really big bunts down for us this year, and we kind of put him in a hole having to bunt with one strike and bunt against a power pitcher like that, and it didn't work out. But I'd do it again. Q. Coach, you kind of made it clear about your frustration with the overall lack of offense, but when you're watching a game like this where you have two staffs with lead arms battling, maybe in the past and even today, I hope you would enjoy a battle like that. But at what point did it just become frustrating? Do you throw your hands up because it's impossible to get it going? COACH SCHLOSSNAGLE: You know, it's just a matter of it was going to come down to who got the big hit or the ball landing in the right spot, and Boomer's short. Their centerfielder's tall. What's his name? Odell smoked that ball in his last at‑bat, and they did a good job of getting the bunt down. Getting the guy at third base. We didn't get two bunts down in the game. Then the shortstop stayed on a breaking ball there to end the game. But, yeah, I'm looking down the bench at our coaches and how is either team going to score until at least somebody comes out of that bullpen and gets tired enough just to leave one pitch up. Irving a great job of working the count to 3 and 2 and we had top give into him with the wind blowing in and he kept it low enough to get it over Boomer's head. Q. Coach, do you feel like you missed out on some opportunities early in the game? Did you have Waddell on the ropes and just didn't take advantage of it? Is that what happened? COACH SCHLOSSNAGLE: Yeah, it's been so long ago, you know, we didn't do a good job in the first inning. You know, we decided we weren't going to bunt with a runner at second base, nobody out, we were going to give Derek a chance to swing, he didn't get the runner to third base. Didn't score in that inning, and in our first game in the World Series we bunted and got the guy in. Then, you know, we threw the ball away. We weren't in good back‑up position to keep the guy from scoring, so that cost us a run. But it's hard to get mad at your team over stuff like that in a 15‑inning game. Finney, I didn't think he was very good early. I think he would admit that to you. Then he caught his rhythm and was as good as he's been all season against a really good team. We competed like crazy, so did they, and it didn't go our way. Q. Coach, you talked a couple days ago about a couple guys in your lineup slumping. You didn't want to change anything because of the consistency factor. Would you consider changing because some of those slumps continued tonight? COACH SCHLOSSNAGLE: Yeah, sure, we'll talk about it. But I don't know. Would they take Big Papi out in an elimination game in the World Series? I don't know. We'll see. Sometimes guys do well at the bottom of the order because that's where they're comfortable hitting and that's kind of where it hits. But Boomer got a big hit yesterday. To me, Derek's last at‑bat is his first at‑bat, a great at‑bat and he'll be ready to go Thursday. But we'll talk about it, but probably not. Q. Ole Miss is next. What do you know about them? COACH SCHLOSSNAGLE: They have obviously a really good team. Big win for them today. Mike and I are really close. Spent all summer together with Team USA. So I was excited he won, but I'm never excited to play real close friends like that. But I know they have a very, very competitive, lot of balance on their team, and good pitching like everybody else. So, haven't thought that much forward yet. But we'll be ready to go. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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