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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMay 23, 2015Dan McDonnellCorey RayGREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA Florida State – 6 HEAD COACH DAN McDONNELL: Want to congratulate Florida State. They went 3 and 0 this week, and they deserve to play in the championship game tomorrow. I'm sure they'll do great in the postseason, as well. We got out managed today, out played and just a tough day for the Cardinals. We'll get back to Louisville and get ready for the NCAA's. Q. Can you explain to me, in the bottom of the 6th, sitting in the outfield how frustrating it is to be out there as you see balls hit by pitchers, and never really have a chance to make an impact from a defensive standpoint? And what's the attitude like in the dugout after you happened, when you surrendered three runs, what do you do to try to rally the troops? COREY RAY: I wasn't frustrated at all. Obviously as an offense we think we can score enough runs to win a baseball game. But we didn't give Brendan enough runs today. It's tough to pitch 0‑0 going into the late innings, even a little mistake can give them the upper edge. I think the thing was when we got in the dugout the attitude was to keep fighting, to fight back. This game isn't over yet. And that's what we try to do. Q. Corey, the first two games of the tournament you were a little bit quiet at the plate and today you got two hits, two for three. What adjustments did you make, if any, at the plate? COREY RAY: I tried to forget about everything that I did before the game today, you know, and just stay in the approach and not do too much. I think sometimes I squeeze the bat alternatives tighter and I try to do too much and that makes me do less, you know. And today I just forget about yesterday. I forget about the games before yesterday. And yesterday I tried to get in the approach, in practice, and get my mind ready to compete and help my team win today. Q. You guys had an unbelievable run through the regular season. Immediately after the game how are you guys responding to coming up short here in the tournament? COREY RAY: You know, the big thing here is to stay in the moment and be where your feet are. We turned the page and we're ready to get out there next week. Q. This is just the second time that you guys have lost back‑to‑back games. The first time since February. How do you guys or how will you guys respond going forward? COREY RAY: I think the good thing is we get to practice, you know. We get after it in practice and we work on the things that we didn't do as well this weekend. And we come out ready to play next week. Q. I hate to ask you this after a loss. But big moment for you, you accepted the invitation to the U.S. college at team. Talk about what that means to you, being invited to join that squad? COREY RAY: It's obviously an honor to represent your country. And I'm very honored. And thank God, my coaches, coach Mac and my family members, because it is a great honor to represent your country and play with USA on your chest. Q. Coach, could you answer this, same question that I asked Corey, the second one about moving forward after losing back‑to‑back games for just the second time this season? HEAD COACH DAN McDONNELL: I loved Corey's answer. We get to go back and practice. I just enjoy practice, love practicing, love getting out on the field, new day. And the realization is I think our three trips to the College World Series, I think we lost in the conference tournament. Believe me, we don't try to lose in this tournament. But whatever taste we leave in our mouth, maybe it helps us refocus, rededicate ourselves for the new season up ahead. Q. You mentioned in the opening statement that you got out managed today. Can you just kind of go further in depth? HEAD COACH DAN McDONNELL: I don't want to get too in depth there, because I can't give away all our secrets, but I clearly got out managed. We didn't make the best decisions today. Could have made a couple different decisions at different times of the game. And my job is to help these guys perform at a high level. And they weren't able to do that today. So that's my responsibility but I lost to Coach Martin, one of the greats. And a lot of respect for him. And like I said, wish him the best of luck in the NCAA's. Q. Brendan had some control problems to start off the bottom of the 6th, and it kind of seemed to come from nowhere. What do you to membership a pitcher get through that, where he hits a batter and then throws a couple of three pitches wild. You went out and talked to him. What's that conversation like and what do you try to get accomplished? HEAD COACH DAN McDONNELL: In one sense Brandon didn't pitch too bad. I thought he pitched really well. He hit a guy with two strikes, who's now got 18 HBPs on the year, I don't know how that rule came into effect. 18 HBPs. And then he walked a guy who probably the toughest out in college baseball. The guy just will not chase a down breaking ball in the dirt. Just threw some good pitches. In that sense, you know, you hit a guy and you walk a guy, they're two and three hole hitters for Florida State. And I thought Quincy had the at‑bat of the game, just what we preach, two strikes, just battle, battle. Just move the ball. And it was a tough play for Sutton. He hit a ground ball and hit that dirt and it took off. And it's what we preach. And again, tip your hat. They did what they needed to do. We tried to make a pitching change there and glad we got Drew Harrington back out there, he hadn't pitched for a while. We're glad he got back out there and I think his hand is okay, which should hopefully get him ready for next weekend. Q. Is it harder to come to a tournament like this when you've already locked up a national seed, from a big pitcher's standpoint, you want to win, it would be nice to win the ACC title. Is it tricky to approach to tournament when you've already kind of had such a great regular season? HEAD COACH DAN McDONNELL: No, we're a competitive bunch. And there's no sitting back. I don't read projections. I have no idea where we're at. We just want to keep getting better as a team. We knew it was going to be a challenge this week. We felt like all eight teams here are playing in the NCAAs, you've got to play good. You've got to get good starts on the mound. You've got to make all the plays and you've got to get some timely hits. And obviously we didn't do that. So I really don't think there was any let down from a standpoint of, well, you know, our résumé is set. I think we're coming here without a doubt trying to win this tournament. But like I said the good news is you get to start fresh and we do have a week to regroup and get ready for the NCAAs. So at least we don't have to lose sleep tonight wondering if we're in or not. And that's a credit to our guys. They earned that right. How well they played this year and how consistent they were. Now we've just got to get ready for next week. Q. I think you alluded to this earlier, you're no stranger to this. You've come off of losing efforts in conference tournaments and had your deepest runs into the College World Series. What is it that you're going to be able to do over the next week to prepare and make another one of those deep runs? HEAD COACH DAN McDONNELL: We just go back to the fundamentals. It's almost like the first day of practice this week. And we just really lock in and focus and as we say, unpack the low batting average or the errors or the walks or whatever it is, it's a new season. Just the way we go about our business throughout the year. We feel like going to Omaha is not what you do in a couple of weeks. Going to Omaha is a way of life. And our kids live it. So they just need to trust their ability. We're not there and compete, and our challenge in the outfield was just prepare, just prepare this week to play good baseball. Q. Coach, you took Mike White out after heading into the bottom of the sixth inning, was there a specific reason for that? HEAD COACH DAN McDONNELL: Logan is our best defensive outfielder. So I'm going to hurt Corey's feelings. But I think everybody knows that Logan catches everything. And in a zero‑zero game, we didn't want a ball to drop. Not that Mike is going to drop a ball, but like that catch that Logan caught, I mean maybe our other outfielders can catch that ball, but we see Logan every day. And Corey will tell you today in our hit round alone, because he wasn't in the starting lineup, he made two or three catches that were just unbelievable. And this is in our BP this morning, Coach Snider said did you see those catches Logan made? We felt in a zero‑zero game, we want to go with our best defense right there. And so he made that great catch. Logan is one of those guys, I've said like Tiberi is a starter, but we can't start him every game. Logan is a starter for us. He doesn't play usually the first half of the game. But he plays the second half of the game. I don't have in front of me how many games he's played in, but it's got to be a lot. He might not start the game, but he runs out there and plays in almost every game. But it was nothing that Mike did, it was just to play our best defense at that time. Q. Next up for you guys to help turn the page you most likely are going to host a Regional next week. Talk about how big that is for you guys? HEAD COACH DAN McDONNELL: I think it's one of the greatest accolades that our program could get. 300 Division 1 teams, a lot of parity. When the NCAA says you deserve to host a Regional, I mean going to Omaha is great, winning championships is great, I would argue hosting the regionals, I don't know if this is our 7th Regional, maybe, that we're about to host, I think it's one of the greatest accomplishments that we've had in our nine years at Louisville. Because that is a body of work. That is 14 weeks, that's injuries, that's slumps, that's tough whether, tough winters that we've had the last three, and to still come out on top and the NCAA say you deserve to host a Regional, something I'm very proud of and our administration and our players should be very proud of. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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