|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIP SUPER REGIONALS: BATON ROUGEJune 7, 2015Kyle ClementTyler GirouardGunner LegerTony RobichauxBATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA LSU – 6 THE MODERATOR: Let's start first, Tyler, talk a little bit about your year and also your career here. TYLER GIROUARD: I mean, it was a great year. The best five years of my life, and I just can't be thankful enough to Coach Robe and God for giving me an opportunity to come back and play. Coach Robe has taught me so much not just about baseball but just about being a man, and I know that's going to help me in my life, and I'm just so thankful for being able to come back and him letting me come back and all the guys having me back. I'm just really appreciative of it. THE MODERATOR: Gunner, great outing. Talk a little bit about your outing, please. GUNNER LEGER: Just, you know, game plan was to come out and throw strikes, and keep them down for five, six innings. The home run was just missed my spot, center cut fastball, and against a team this good, a lineup this good, you can't do that. They strung a few hits together, balked that guy over, just got to be better. Got to do my job. THE MODERATOR: Kyle, a couple great defensive plays, also the RBI there in the eighth with a base hit in the fourth. Talk about your day both offensively and defensively. KYLE CLEMENT: First of all, I want to give all the credit to this guy. I know he's not going to give it to himself, but he pitched a heck of a game. We were trying to leave it all on the line. I was doing everything I could. I just wanted to leave it all out there on that field in case this outcome happened, but we weren't expecting it. It was a great season. THE MODERATOR: Tony, a few comments, please. TONY ROBICHAUX: Well, one, we knew we had to come out and pitch real well again. Again, their starter, we knew he was going to be tough, and he was. Give him credit. Gunner threw a great game. Our two true freshmen just came in here and threw lights out for us. That's all you can ask as a head coach is to be able to come out here and put in true freshmen in the conditions we were in and keep us where we were. I stuck with him all the way through, and if I had the choice to do it again, I'd do it again, because he's not just a freshman, he's a man. He mans up and he gets after what he has to get after, and I gave him that opportunity tonight, and you know, credit Bregman, he got a ball back through the middle on us and we let one inning get away from us in two days. So that's pretty good when you talk about coming in here against such a quality opponent. Again, Shug could have walked out in the sunset on us with a 58‑10 team last year and went and took care of a knee injury throughout the fall and came back in through the door and wanted back in, so I can't say enough about his leadership. If I was in corporate America tomorrow, I'd hire him. He understands servant leadership, he understands what it takes to be a leader, great clubhouse presence, helping us manage these freshmen this year. I don't think the freshmen would be where they're at this year without our five seniors. And Clem, the job he did for us all throughout the season in the outfield and continuing to grow and mature as a player, he's going to do big things next year. So I'm proud of these guys. They fought all the way through this. We came into one of the toughest places in the country to play with two freshman starting pitchers and really pitched against a three‑run‑inning except for just one inning, and that's really what you have to stay away from in this ballpark, but that's not going to take away any respect I have for these guys. They did not let their season define them. They defined their season. For that I'm appreciative of their hard work and their effort. I'm proud of them. Q. Gunner, how did you feel in the eighth and how did you feel like your stuff was then compared to the middle innings? GUNNER LEGER: I mean, it felt fine, felt normal. My job was to get us to the next day, and just got to make better pitches. Q. Tyler, I know that you were unsure for a minute whether to come back for this year. And now that this year is over, looking back on that decision, just kind of take back what it meant for you to come back. TYLER GIROUARD: I wouldn't take it back. I'm so happy I came back. Getting away from it for a while, it made me realize how much I missed it, and I didn't want to miss this. This was unbelievable. It was so much fun this year. Being around the guys, it's just‑‑ I don't know, it's just awesome. I made the right decision coming back. Q. Clem, can you take us through those two catches in the fourth inning and knowing that you guys were going to need to keep the score down today to have a chance to win? KYLE CLEMENT: You know, it didn't really‑‑ the situation didn't fully sink in yesterday because it was Game 1. I knew our season was on the line, not that we were playing tensed up or anything, but I knew that I was going to leave it all out on that field. Like you said, we have five seniors. I'm really close with all of them and I wanted to do it for them. I wanted to get us to the next day just to enjoy another day with them, and I think that's what really let me get to those balls in the gap was just knowing I was going to do everything I could in this game to get us to tomorrow. Q. Coach, how much did you suspect that you would see what you saw the first six, seven innings with two of them going at it, and how did that affect how you approached things, if at all? TONY ROBICHAUX: Well, you know, we thought we'd have some chances and we had some chances. We just couldn't get a timely hit off of him. He made the big pitches when he needed to. Gunner did an excellent job of getting outs, and a lot of the outs weren't really hard outs. He was really in control of everything. Bregman is a great hitter. We wanted to try to expand the strike zone and try and get down there and use that changeup that he's been using the whole game off of him, and he really had poured bats off of him, but it is what it is. He made a good pitch and he did what a great player does. He hit a two‑hopper through the infield. We felt that our whole motto in this situation is to keep the game where it is and just do what we do, and that's all I kept telling Gunner every time he went out is just do what we do, just keep doing what we do, and that's all you can do at that point in time. Hopefully the hitters can get a timely hit. We just never could get a timely hit. Credit Poché for that. When he had to make big pitches, he made them. Q. Gunner, it seemed like early in the game especially, you were kind of using your off‑speed to keep them off balance and then kind of coming in with the fastball late. Was that the plan on those guys? GUNNER LEGER: Yeah, that was the plan. I mean, I just could tell they're explosive. You make a mistake, they're going to hit it over the fence. Yeah, that was the game plan, kind of expand the zone, go in, out, up, down. It was tough against this team. Our defense played great. We scored I think it was three or four runs, and that should be plenty. I mean, really, man, they force you to be almost perfect because you make one bad pitch and that guy hits it 400 feet, and that changed the complexion of the game right there. So yeah. Q. Tony, you did have first open, but Bregman obviously had been struggling. Was that even a debate for you? TONY ROBICHAUX: We kicked it around. We knew we had first base open. We felt we were going to go changeup down and hopefully if he stayed off of it we'd give him first base. We wanted to try to pitch him there if we could instead of intentionally walking him. Sometimes intentionally walking and loading up the bases sometimes can spook pitchers at this level. They do it all the time in the Big Leagues, but we don't always do that in the college game. I just looked at it and saw what Gunner had done with him the whole game and felt that he was my guy. He had brought me to this point and we were going to go with it. Again, he didn't hit a ball off the wall or out of the ballpark, he hit a two‑hopper back through the middle. Credit him, but I stuck with my freshman because I believe in him. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|