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NCAA BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIP SUPER REGIONALS: CHAMPAIGNJune 6, 2015Kevin DucheneDan HartlebRyan NagleCHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS Vanderbilt – 13 DAN HARTLEB: Well, it's more fun being the second team in here, I can tell you that much. We just didn't play very well. If you look, the bottom line is we made nine major mistakes. We walked guys, we hit guys, and we made errors, and when you do that to a good team, you come out on the short end. I think we got all of our mistakes out of the way for the weekend, and we just have to move forward. I thought our guys did a good job from a mental standpoint. Nobody panicked in the dugout. I thought we continued to take quality at‑bats, hit some balls hard, just hit them right at some of the defenders, but I thought our guys still continued to play and didn't get down, and we just didn't perform very well with simple fundamentals. Q. Kevin, the walks is pretty uncharacteristic for you. What do you think led to that tonight? KEVIN DUCHENE: You know, I might have been a little overexcited, overthrowing the ball a little bit. You know, command hasn't been great the last couple starts. I felt good in the pen, and really there's no excuse for it. Just didn't have it. Q. Kevin, how much of a factor do you think the difference in experience was? Obviously Vanderbilt had gone to Omaha and all that, you guys are making your first run through this. KEVIN DUCHENE: You know, I believe in the ability of our team. You know, no matter who we're up against, somebody that's been there 10 times or somebody that's been there never. You know, as Coach said, we didn't do key things right today, so I just‑‑ I don't think that the experience factor had that much of a play on it. Q. Ryan, you had two of the four hits off of Fulmer. How did you figure him out? RYAN NAGLE: Yeah, overall he was giving me a few good pitches to hit. I didn't put the greatest swing on either one of my hits, they just found a way through. Other guys on the team hit the ball a lot harder than I did, they were just right at people. Just finding a hole in the infield, I guess. Q. Did it seem like the opposite was true for Vanderbilt, that their softly hit ones‑‑ RYAN NAGLE: Yeah, I think off Kevin they found a lot of balls right through the hole. I know a lot of balls came out to me past right Ryan, stuff like that. Yeah, but I don't think they hit too many balls that hard, they just found a few more holes than we did I feel like. Q. Kevin, any issues with the strike zone? It seemed to be fluctuating a little bit. KEVIN DUCHENE: I mean, I didn't see it from anybody else's standpoint, but I'm sure it was whatever it was both ways. I don't really have any issue with it. You know, yeah, not really. Q. Kevin, is there anything you can identify that might have led to your sudden relative loss of command the last couple starts? KEVIN DUCHENE: Nope. I have no idea or else I probably would have figured that one out. Q. For both of you, how did Fulmer, how did actually facing them compare to what you expected going in? RYAN NAGLE: He's a good pitcher but we've seen pitchers this year that were just as good as him I thought. We just didn't get our job done as much as we should have, but yeah, he didn't overpower any of us. His command was good but it was nothing we haven't seen before. KEVIN DUCHENE: I don't know if I could give you a very truthful response to that. Obviously it was uncharacteristically very, very bad today, very bad. I thought that their hitters did a very good job of laying off some pitches that to me looked pretty good, but at the same time I wasn't really around the strike zone at all. Laying off those pitches were just good decisions on their part. Q. Can you speak to the great crowd you had that turned out? I imagine that adds to your disappointment that they went home. KEVIN DUCHENE: Well, absolutely. The super regional sold out in, what, five minutes, eight minutes, something like that. The fans have been terrific all year long, very supportive. What did we have, 3,500 people out here tonight, and dating all the way back to the bleacher bum barbecue, we've had just a great backing. You know, it was hard‑‑ it's hard, obviously, to get beat pretty bad like that at home, but at the same time, you know, this is baseball. We're not done yet. This series isn't over. You know, hopefully we can get everybody back out there tomorrow and they can see a better ballgame from us. Q. Ryan, this team has been pretty resilient this season. How do you feel like you'll face tomorrow's game, elimination game? RYAN NAGLE: Yeah, I think we'll be fine. We've been down quite a few times this year it seems like, so we always find a way to come back, and we're confident we can win these next two games. We're not really stressing too much about it. Q. Coach, there's another Midwest team playing right now and they lost by a pretty big margin to another SEC team. Just your thoughts on how you're going to get your team ready for tomorrow? I saw bits and pieces of Missouri state game and obviously the final score. It's just part of baseball. There's some games that get away from you. That's part of athletics. This team is going to bounce back. We've bounced back every time we haven't played well. We find a way to turn around and get our jobs done. I have zero concern about our approach, and the way these guys are going to come out and play tomorrow because we've done it all year. We haven't changed anything from day one, so we'll be ready to go. Q. Coach, I asked Kevin there about the difference in super regional experience. Even if that wasn't a factor, when you get down 3‑0 like that, do you have to fight against that in the dugout, the difference in the experience between the two? DAN HARTLEB: We've never had to fight from a mentality standpoint this year. We had some opportunities early to get right back in the game. With some situational type hitting, it's probably a different game. As I said, we got beat in all three areas, and you don't have to get hits always to score runs. We had opportunities to score a couple runs without getting hits, and we didn't do it. So I don't think that's experience, that's just, again, part of the game. Q. Do you have a feel for why Kevin has not been as sharp the last three or so weeks? DAN HARTLEB: No, no, I don't. As I said, if we had a feel for what we could do to help him or what he could do to make an adjustment, he's been good in bullpen sessions, he's been good in the bullpen prior to games, and then he's come out and just hasn't been as sharp. You know, we don't know what that situation is. Hopefully we can get our jobs done the next two days and try to help him make an adjustment or two in Omaha. Q. Tomorrow do you go with Drasen Johnson? Do you stick with the rotation? DAN HARTLEB: We haven't made on decisions on that yet. We'll talk when I get back over to the clubhouse. Q. You didn't throw Tyler today, so he's available for anything? DAN HARTLEB: Yeah, yeah, we've got everybody available. That's one reason when we got down, we just started to roll different guys out there, a number of different guys, just to keep pitch totals down. Everybody is available tomorrow except for Kevin. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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