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NCAA MEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIES

June 20, 2016

Omaha, Nebraska

UC Santa Barbara 5, Miami 3

THE MODERATOR: We'll have a statement from Coach Morris and then player questions and then we'll come back to Coach Morris after that.

COACH MORRIS: First, I'd like to -- I'm sorry -- I'd like to congratulate Santa Barbara on the win. They played well.

I'm disappointed in the way we played out here in Omaha. We didn't do the little things that we did all year to win the number of games we did.

I felt like we had a great season coming into it. But the little things that we've been doing, we didn't hit with guys on base or make a pitch or make a play defensively that we needed to make to win. And when you get to this level, you've got to do all the things to win, because everybody out here is playing well, and Santa Barbara's a club that played very good today. They played good defensively.

They got down a couple of bunts when they needed them or whatever to win. And I congratulate them. But I'm proud of our team. They played hard all year.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes.

Q. Danny, just how tough was it to watch that sixth inning unfold from the dugout after the great start you gave the game?
DANNY GARCIA: I was speechless. Frankie did the best he can, and unfortunately they scored. And my goal was to put up zeros, nine zeros on the board, and unfortunately I didn't do that. So I didn't do a very good job.

Q. Danny, the rain delay about an hour in the sixth inning happened right in the middle of that inning, after you'd given up a base hit, what did you do during the delay to try to stay loose and stay focused?
DANNY GARCIA: My pitch coach, J.D. Arteaga, he told me to go down to the batting cages start throwing, tossing. Tossed about twice, and I told him I was ready and I wanted the ball again. And I just wanted to pitch, you know.

Q. Danny, a little bit of a rough start, and then you kind of got into a groove. Any nerves in the beginning or what changed for you as you got into the game past the second inning?
DANNY GARCIA: I was actually excited. Obviously I had that rough second inning. But I minimized damage and not even one run scored. And just had a mindset of just going up there and dominating and just throwing in strikes, competing and having our offense come in and hit as quick as possible.

Q. Zack, you were on the base there in the eighth. Looked like you guys had the opportunity there to get some of that back. You got two of the runs back. Did you feel like you guys were going to come back and win this thing?
ZACK COLLINS: Yeah, I feel like we always have a chance. I mean, this team all year has came back from plenty of deficits. We've came back from more than four runs all year.

And we had a chance going into the ninth inning. We were all confident of that. And it just didn't happen.

Q. Zack, this team won 50 games, won the ACC regular season. How do you respond to the people who I'm sure will try to define this season by what happened in Omaha?
ZACK COLLINS: You can't look at it like that. I mean, we made it to Omaha. We're one of the top eight teams that have made it here in college baseball. And we had a great season. Winning 50 games in one season is a huge goal for us.

And just making it here is big for us. So we played hard and just didn't get it done.

Q. Zack, tell me about the home run you had in the first inning?
ZACK COLLINS: Just being aggressive. He threw a fastball 1-0, and I was aggressive, put the barrel on it and it went out.

Q. Did you know it was gone when you hit it?
ZACK COLLINS: You never know it's gone in this field. Especially with the way the wind's been blowing. And I was trying hard.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for Coach.

Q. The decision to have Garcia come back after the rain delay, was there any thought in your mind of maybe going to a reliever after that long a delay or were you pretty confident in Garcia at that point?
COACH MORRIS: You know, playing at Miami, we have quite a few rain delays. So we're used to handling that, and J.D. does a good job of guys throwing, not just sitting for 45 minutes, which it was approximately a 45-minute rain delay. He got up twice and threw in the cages.

And we felt like he was ready to throw. And he came out and got the first guy out, first pitch. And then the next guy, he only pitched two hitters after that. It was kind of after him that's when things went haywire with the bunt defense, the two safety squeezes and then opposite field, those opposite field hits killed us in the two games.

There were three or four of those that scored two runs. But I felt that he was ready to come back, and we were -- no matter what happened after those two lefties, he had back-to-back lefties, we were going to Bartow with a righty.

Q. Jim, what did you see from their starter, Davis? What made him effective? You got two hits in six innings right off?
COACH MORRIS: He went right at us. He got ahead in the count. He hit his spots. He threw his breaking ball over. And he just went right after us. But he hit his spots. Same thing as happened yesterday. Both those guys hit their spots. They weren't overpowering either one of them. They had good arms, but we've seen a lot of great arms this year. But he hit his spots but just comes back to what the most important thing is location and movement, not necessarily velocity.

Q. Can you express the disappointment? You guys came here as potential favorites, with all the juniors you had on this team, and now to be sitting here on Monday knowing you're going home very early, how disappointed are you right now?
COACH MORRIS: Well, I'm disappointed. We weren't the favorite coming in here, though. I wish we were. But we weren't really the favorite coming in here.

But I'm disappointed because we didn't play as well as we could play. If we played as well as we could play and lost I would understand more. But we didn't swing the bat the way I know we can swing it. We didn't get big hits that we've been getting all year. And we had one error, but that one error cost us, because it kind of opened the door and there in the eighth we would have had a chance to go ahead versus a guy at first base with a chance to tie. So it was a huge play for us, one single play.

But it was disappointing because our guys worked very hard. Everybody worked very hard to try to get us to where we are at in this position. But for us as a team we just -- a lot of these guys are going to sign, I'm sure, and we've got to turn the page. I'll meet with the team when we get back, very short meeting today. And I'll meet with the team when we get back and kind of know more what's going on and try to keep pounding on and prepared and try to get these guys back to Omaha next year.

So it's always the goal. If you come you're going to win it, if you keep working hard, doing what you gotta do.

Q. Did you feel the ballpark might have impacted you guys offensively at all or did it just come down more to execution with you guys?
COACH MORRIS: I don't think the ballpark affected us at all. This time because Zack's ball went out, Zack's ball would not have gone out last night but (indiscernible) ball would not have gone out. In most ball parks it wasn't the ballpark as far as not carrying. The ball didn't carry but we didn't really hit a lot of balls that you would say, wow, that would have been gone or something like that. So I thought the park played very fair for us.

We didn't play as well as we had to do. But our hits were line drives; they weren't home runs.

Q. You won a couple of championships here, but the game is different now, I guess, than it was then. You still had some great teams since then. But is it harder now, do you think, to win it all when you consider the national landscape than it was 15 years ago?
COACH MORRIS: I don't think it's necessarily harder to win it once you get here. I think it's harder to get here.

There's so many good teams that I've never heard of 15 years ago, being Santa Barbara. I wouldn't have known anything about them. But this is their first time. And I want to congratulate them. It's a great thing. And them getting here or even TCU, to the point you heard of them, but they weren't a baseball school. And the coaches have gone in there done a great job.

There's so many teams out there battling that are on the edge to get to Omaha. It's really tough.

The game's changed so much just since I've been at Miami, not just since I started coaching but since -- I came in '94, the schedules you play, us being in the ACC, the umpiring, everything, it's gotten better and tougher and it's just tough to just get here.

And when you get here, everybody's playing well, everybody's good and you can't make mistakes. And you gotta do what you did to get here, and that's the team that's going to win it, that can relax, play the game and get good hits and play defense and do whatever with the pen. Our pen pitched good but we just didn't get it done the other ways.

Q. Can you kind of expound a little bit on when you're talking about Santa Barbara and not knowing much about them, is it also just so much harder on teams when you just -- you're not in the same region. They're a West Coast team obviously. You rarely see them if ever. Is it harder to scout those teams than teams that maybe you would see a year ago or this year?
COACH MORRIS: Well, I don't think we've ever played before, I think that's correct, not since I've been in Miami anyway. That's the reason I love coming to California and playing before when we were in the ACC, being an independent. We played the teams out there, the best of the best we always tried to play with.

Whether it was the California teams or Texas or whoever it was at that particular time, because I thought that prepared us to play. And West Coast baseball is a little bit different than the East Coast baseball. No question. A little bit more small ball and bunting and safety squeezes, and two of them are back to back, a little bit different.

But they play the game hard and play it well, and these guys did a great job. And both teams really that we lost to did a really good job. And they're all California -- both of them are California-style baseball as far as I'm concerned.

And going back to Long Beach State, the way they played, they were a very good team, too, and just as good as this team, if they would have just got a break. You gotta get a break and be lucky and take advantage of an opportunity that's being lucky as far as I'm concerned and they took advantage of that and we didn't.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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NCAA MEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIES

June 20, 2016

Zack Collins

Danny Garcia

Jim Morris