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NCAA WOMEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIESJune 3, 2016Reagan DykesHaylie McCleneyPatrick MurphyAlexis OsorioOklahoma City, Oklahoma Oklahoma - 3, Alabama - 0 THE MODERATOR: Coach, general comments about the game? PATRICK MURPHY: Well, I thought it was a great game. I know everybody got their money's worth, and you guys got your money's worth. In postseason softball there's three things, starting pitching, team defense, and timely hitting, and they got three for three and we were two out of three. So sometimes that's the way it goes. But just a really, really good game. Q. Reagan and Haylie, can you talk about the opportunities you felt like you let get away in this game and even I think your last time up was one, two, three and didn't put any pressure on them in that situation? HAYLIE MCCLENEY: Yeah, I think we did a nice job of getting people on base. I think we put pressure on them. Like Murph said, we just didn't get the timely hit, and that's going to happen sometimes, especially with a great pitcher like Paige Parker. We just needed one key hit. Lex threw a shutout for seven innings. That's really all we can ask her to do, and it's frustrating as an offense to not have your pitcher's back, but we'll take it, we'll learn from it, and we were going to play one game a day anyway, so might as well do it now. REAGAN DYKES: Yeah, I completely agree with what Haylie said. Lex pitched her butt off, and I thought she did an awesome job. We did get runners on base but didn't have that timely hitting that Coach Murphy talked about. That's key. Q. Coach, just the mentality now of backs against the wall, no more margin for error as you play tomorrow. PATRICK MURPHY: Yeah, you know, I just told them in the locker room, when you get here the margin for error is like this big, and it's either a mis-hit or a home run, and we had a couple that we just missed that we fouled straight back that we didn't get on the field, and they did. So the margin of error at the World Series is as tiny as they get. It's just like the Super Bowl or the Final Four. I think our new kids, there's a couple of them that got opportunities, and that's going to help them tomorrow, and I think the best thing about it is we don't get a day off. I think that's the best thing because we go back to the hotel, eat, change clothes, go to bed, and then come back out here, and I'd rather have that than taking a day off. Q. What was the reasoning behind having Hawkins pinch-hit for her in the fifth inning? PATRICK MURPHY: Righty versus lefty. Q. Alexis, can you talk about what was working for you up until that point? Looked like you had the ball on a string a lot. They were swinging at some stuff, I guess the kind of things you like them to swing at, and Haylie, can you discuss the catch at the wall? ALEXIS OSORIO: I think overall everything was working pretty well for me. They just got that timely hit that they needed with runners in scoring position. HAYLIE MCCLENEY: Yeah, and as far as the catch goes, you know, Romero had been hitting her pretty hard all night. She does a really nice job of keeping her hands high, and off Alexis's rise ball, not many people were touching it. Romero was one of the ones that was making contact a lot, and just got a good read on it, went back as hard as I could and ended up running into the wall, but it was a great pitch. I really don't know how she hit it. But yeah, it's just knowing the field. Been here before. Go back, catch it, run as hard as you can. Q. Patrick, when you have a game start and then you have to have a long delay and then you have to come back and finish it the next day, I know it wasn't very much played yesterday, but did that have any impact, and how did you sort of handle all of that? PATRICK MURPHY: I don't think so. I think they're a pretty loose group, and during the delay yesterday they played charades and danced and did whatever they do, and I don't think anybody was uptight at all. And then today, we just considered it game day two, had the same schedule, went to eat lunch at the same time, got them out of the hotel, you know, instead of sitting around, and I don't think it was any delay at all, and then when we started, it was like immediately there was no National Anthem, there was no lineups, and I think that was kind of cool, too, to just, boom, get out there and go. I don't know if they have anything different, but I don't think it affected anything. HAYLIE MCCLENEY: Yeah, I don't think it affected us much at all. It just kind of felt like déjà-vu, getting out here at the same time and warming up the same way. If anything I liked it better because we didn't have the National Anthem, the intros, all that leading up to the game, it was like, we're both here, let's finish what we started, and it being no score in the second inning, it didn't really affect us much. ALEXIS OSORIO: Yeah, I honestly don't think that the rain delay really affected us because we just came back the next day and it's a 0-0 ballgame going into the second inning, so I don't think it really did much for us. REAGAN DYKES: Well, for me just a freshman and your first time here, of course you're going to have nerves your first time on the field, so it didn't affect me that much, but just being out here and having two innings under my belt, it was just like another game here. Q. Alexis, when it gets late in the game and it's a scoreless game like that and you and Paige are both dealing, does it affect anything with the way you pitch and do you feel that extra pressure in the circle? ALEXIS OSORIO: No, not at all. I don't feel any pressure. I just know that I've just got to keep the ball moving and just having the mis-hit, and then I knew that somehow my team would find a way, but it just didn't work out in our favor. Q. Alexis, what makes Shay such a good hitter and what was your approach on that final at-bat? ALEXIS OSORIO: She's just an all-around great hitter. She has such a great bat, and as a freshman that's pretty impressive. My approach with her was just trying to get ahead in the count, and she just won the battle on that one. Q. Haylie, what do you do going into tomorrow, rallying these guys, as we said before, knowing backs are against the wall? HAYLIE MCCLENEY: Yeah, we talked about it in the locker room a little bit, but we've been the comeback kids all year. You can go back and look at our schedule. We scored eight runs in one inning against Georgia, we came back against Arizona twice to win. We never feel like we're out of a game. We bend, but we don't break. We bent a little bit tonight, but we're going to get over it. We're going to put our big girl pants on. We were going to play one game a day anyway like I said earlier, and you just got to take that approach. It's win or go home, we know that, and we're going to be ready. There's no doubt in my mind, we've had this experience on the field, we're a veteran group, we have great starting pitching, like we showed tonight. Our offense just needs to get it going, and we can do that. We've been doing it all year, and we will get it done here? Q. Patrick, you mentioned the team sort of dancing around and stuff during the delay last night. Kind of reminded me of four years ago during the delay against Oklahoma. Is that looseness just the result of -- is that something you encourage from your team, and if so, has that always been your approach? PATRICK MURPHY: I think it's just more personalities of the kids that we have. They have like a childlike love for the game, and you don't want to ruin that, and I know you've seen coaches that do ruin that. I'm not going to do that. They all love the game. Anything competition, they're doing it. They had competitions as to who could do the best -- I don't know what it was. They're a loose group, and I've learned the hard way, too, here being the opposite, that too tight does not equal success. I've learned. Q. Patrick, there was kind of three situations in this game, one of them going back to yesterday and how things can turn in this close a game, Haylie's catch, Reagan throwing out the runner when they may have stolen more if that worked, and then of course leaving the runner on third in that key situation. Can you discuss those three and how they affected the flow of this? PATRICK MURPHY: Well, I've told the team this year in softball, baseball, any game really, there's usually like three or four plays that decide the entire decision. Obviously the last one was a big one. With Caroline Hardy with a runner at third, I was hoping for a sac fly because she's the best at it. You can ask anybody up here, she gets it out of the infield better than anybody, and she had a good shot at it and she fouled it straight back, and then a good pitcher, I don't know if she realizes she threw one right there and then the next pitch is a great change-up, and strike three. We need to take advantage of those opportunities, and for us, we didn't have that big-time moment. We went eight innings with not one. And I think they're capable, and I know they're capable. They know it, and we've got to come back tomorrow. Q. Haylie, a year ago you guys got to Parker in Tuscaloosa in that super regional. They really talked about how important that was for her growth. Did you see her different tonight? I know you faced her earlier this year. Has she changed since a year ago at this time? HAYLIE MCCLENEY: I think every pitcher grows, especially coming from an offseason. Which I'm sure she worked extremely hard at after what for them was probably a bitter end to their season last year. But yeah, I mean, she had great command. She was keeping us off balance with the changeup, but she consistently threw strikes and kept us guessing. But I think with any pitcher you're going to see growth season to season. Q. Alexis, when Shay came up for that last at-bat, were you even thinking about what happened earlier this year with her at the end of the earlier game this season? ALEXIS OSORIO: No, not at all. I wasn't even thinking about back in California. But I mean, she just got that timely hit, which kudos to her. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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