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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMay 24, 2016Chris PollardKellon UrbonDurham, North Carolina Wake Forest - 4, Duke - 3 CHRIS POLLARD: Very proud of our club. I thought we competed really well again today. We've played really, really good baseball over the second half of the season and I thought we did it again today. We just had a couple of opportunities with runners in scoring position where we didn't deliver, and that's baseball. And a lot of the credit for the fact that we didn't execute goes to Parker Dunshee and Will Craig that both pitched outstanding. I don't want to take anything away from the job Wake Forest did. Both their kids pitched fantastic. Obviously we had 13 hits and only managed to push across three. I thought Kellen pitched exceptionally well. Credit Fairchild; he was ready for a fastball there in the first. Outside of that, really just a couple of singles here and there, and to do that on short rest, Kellen's had a terrific year. Pitched great. Q. How did you feel today going on short rest, how that all worked out. KELLEN URBON: Felt pretty good, even though it was short rest, kind of did everything in the middle of the week just to get prepared for today. So I felt pretty good out there. But the pitch to Fairchild, like Coach said, he was just ready for a fastball. We were trying to get early contact, trying to get a ground ball. He hit it. Q. Was there anything about that location of that fastball, or was he kind of ready and did he put a good swing on it? KELLEN URBON: I'll have to go back and look at it. I thought it was pretty low. It was over the middle of the plate but trying to be aggressive down the zone and wouldn't really take it back. Q. Coach talked about how this team has played really well in the second half, and I imagine your confidence level at this point is pretty high heading into probably the NCAA Tournament. What has that ride been like for you guys to get from where you were to where you are now? CHRIS POLLARD: It's been really fun actually. I mean, towards the beginning of the year, obviously we had our struggles but just watching the team kind of evolve through the season has really been fun to watch and we are just lucky to be a part of it. Q. Was that a tough situation in the ninth inning to have Labosky bunt? What was your thought process? CHRIS POLLARD: My thought process was velocity match up I thought favored Craig in that situation, so we made a decision that we would give Jack one opportunity to try to time up a fastball. In other words, we got our best guy at the plate; let's see if he'll pipe a fastball thinking that we are in a bunt situation and maybe with the short porch in left, he runs one out of the yard. When we got to 0-1, we had discussed it before the inning, we made the decision, if it got to 0-1, we would bunt in that situation. As it wound up, we were able to work ourselves back to a favorable count where we were swinging away again which is ultimately what we would have liked to have done. I don't know what to say. Tip your hat. I don't know that Will Craig threw a breaking ball for a strike other than that 3-2 pitch right there with nobody out. I'll go back and look at the chart but I think every other breaking ball that was thrown in his outing was for a ball. So for him to be able to execute a 3-2 breaking ball in that spot, knowing that if he doesn't execute it, the winning run is at first base. That takes a lot of guts. Sometimes in our sport, just have to be willing to tip your hat. We're going to sit fastball every time in that situation. If we had it to do over again, sit fastball item there again. Kid made a great pitch. Q. Will there be a lot of nerves on Monday or do you think you're okay getting in the tournament? KELLEN URBON: I think we're feeling pretty good about it but obviously it's not set in stone until the committee announces it but we're keeping our fingers crossed. Q. Can you comment on that, as well, as far as the season your team had, the strong finish and your confidence going into NCAA selection? CHRIS POLLARD: Sure. I think the best way that I would answer that question is I think most of the folks that really know our sport, had us in going into today. And I can't see where anything that happened on the field today would take that away from us. We had 13 hits. We walked one guy. We didn't make an error. I don't think we played poorly. I think we just missed one hit there in a key spot. I think you look at our resumé, you look at the five ACC Series wins over the last month and a half; three out of the last four ACC Series wins; we had to win three on the road down the stretch, so that's three ACC Series on the road down the stretch; to go 4-1 in ACC play, we're now, even with this loss, 9-2 in the month of May. We haven't lost a non-conference game since March. I think we've played as well -- I think if you really take a deep dive into the numbers, we've played as well as anybody in the country over the second half of the season. To be the seventh-place team in the best conference in the country, in my opinion, absolutely deserves an opportunity to go to the NCAA Tournament. These kids have worked very hard for it. I know it's out of our control. I would say that we absolutely have earned the right to go and keep playing baseball. Q. On the same subject, how important is it for this program and for you guys to make that step and to get into the tournament now? KELLEN URBON: Oh, it's very important. It's something that we've been talking about since the beginning of the season. This has been -- not even beginning of the season, just beginning of the year. This has been our goal and everything that we do in the fall, summer, in the winter, like this is what we're working towards. This is really big for us. Q. After the home run, the other two runs were both scored on advancements on fly balls by Wake Forest, their alert play. Is that something you thought might comeback and bite you by the end of the game? CHRIS POLLARD: Well, I think that if you look at the run in the third inning, that's one we'd like to have back, because it was an 0-2 hit. Then we walked him to second base, so we gave away the free base there. Then we got on our heels a little bit on the tag, on really a ball that he shouldn't have been able to tag on. That run loomed large. And then the other opportunity that we had in the game, we fully intended to pitch around Sheets in that situation with two outs. Credit him; we left that ball a little too close to the plate right there for a pitch-around situation, and he took advantage of it. And those two runs loomed large. You tip your hat on the home run. Like Kellen said, we've got two outs in that situation, we're pitching to contact. Fairchild makes a great swing. The other two, if we could go back and do them all over again, those are moments where I think we could execute a little bit differently. Q. Sheets' was first pitch, too? CHRIS POLLARD: It was. Q. Obviously it would have been hard to leave a guy like Parker Dunshee out, but were you surprised that Kellen and none of your pitchers got ACC recognition yesterday afternoon? CHRIS POLLARD: The hard thing is, there's so many deserving guys. I wouldn't take anything away from anybody that's on that all-conference team. They are all terrific players. It's such a deep league. Do I think Kellen deserved to be an all-conference player? Yes. Do I think Brian McAfee deserved to be an all-conference player? Yes. But I would say all those guys that there are some other guys that didn't make all-conference that were very deserving. That's what you get when you have a league that's this good and this deep. You're going to have some all-conference calibre players that aren't able to fit on those teams. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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