|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMay 26, 2017Monte LeeChase PinderLouisville, Kentucky Virginia - 10, Clemson - 2 MONTE LEE: Give Virginia a lot of credit. They played a great baseball game today. They jumped on our starting pitcher, Pat Krall, in the first inning. Just seems like every ball we threw over the plate, they hit on the barrel. They got a lot of momentum going their way in the first inning. We couldn't stop the bleeding. Tried to get Eubanks in the ballgame as quickly as we could but by that point, you know, they were centering every baseball that came across the plate. I thought after that, we actually threw the ball pretty well. If you look at the job that Alex did after the first inning when he came in, Schnell did a nice job, Tyler Jackson, Riley, our guys did a nice job of pitching. Offensively, Daniel Lynch kept us down. Got a lot of ground ball outs and we swung at a lot of borderline pitches in the zone and hit a lot of ground balls and just could not really mount a threat offensively at all. So you have to give Virginia a lot of credit. They were the better team today. Q. Chase, do you feel like that first inning run would give you a little momentum heading into the rest of the game? CHASE PINDER: Yeah, I felt like it was a good start to the game. You know, when you get people on like that with no outs, two people, only no outs, we probably should do more than just get one and we just didn't capitalize like we should. Q. That's been a little bit of a recurring theme. Is it beginning to wear on guys a little bit? CHASE PINDER: You know, we're just looking forward. We've still got baseball to play, so we can't be too down in the dumps. We'll be fine. Q. Weston, do you think this team deserves to be at home next weekend, judging on the whole season's body of work? WESTON JACKSON: Obviously I think we should be at home. Things haven't been going our way and we haven't been playing the best baseball lately but I think I speak for everyone else on the team that we are not going to give in. We are not going to cash out the season. We are going to treat the next game no matter where we're playing, just like we did the first game of the season. That's something that we really can't control. We just go out there and play wherever they tell us to play? Q. Chase, your thoughts on that subject? CHASE PINDER: I feel like if you look at whole body of work that we deserve a chance to host. But again, it's not in our control. Something from the outside, someone else would make a decision on. I'm not too worried about it. I guess we'll see. Q. Lynch has not been an overpowering pitcher. What do you see out of him? WESTON JACKSON: He just mixed his pitches and we didn't do a good job at the plate making an adjustment. For me, he didn't really throw his fastball much. If he did, it was for show inside. He just lived with his changeup on the low and outside and we would swing out of the zone at it and didn't really make him throw it across the plate for a strike. That's something we have to do better offensively as a team together. Q. Talk about the motivation, the change in format, what did you sense with the team's eagerness? MONTE LEE: We were eager. We were motivated. We spent a lot of time the last two days talking about the importance of this next game. We spent time before the game talking about the importance of this game. So it had nothing to do with the format. It had nothing to do with the thought of it being a meaningless game in terms of winning an ACC Championship. Our guys, we discussed it at length about how important this game was today and for us to play to try to put together a game plan to play our best baseball. Q. With that said, from what you saw in the dugout, what was going on with the team today? MONTE LEE: Well, we didn't have it because Lynch threw a lot of pitches at the bottom of the strike zone and we hit a lot of ground balls. Through six innings, we made 21 outs and 17 are them are on the ground. The bottom line is you're not going to do damage at the plate unless you hit balls in the gap. That's the bottom line: 21 outs, 17 of them were on the ground. He did an excellent job of throwing pitches at the bottom of the strike zone. So offensively, we struggled in that regard. And you know, what can we say about the first inning. Pat has been one of our best pitchers for the last two years. Just did not have it today. He hit some barrels, the first three guys got hits and next thing you know, they are off and running. At that point we have to make a decision. We are going to have to get somebody else going, so we tried to get Alex going as quickly as we possibly could but it takes time to get a guy loose and get him ready in the bullpen to bring him into the ballgame, and Virginia is a good offense. Virginia is one of the best offenses in our league. Once they get that type of momentum going, it's hard to stop them. You have to make pitches and you have to make plays and it just did not happen for them in the first inning there on the mound. But that being said, you know, Pat's been one of our best pitchers for the last two years and he deserved the opportunity to go out there and start today. Threw well against Virginia early year in the year and he's been good for us. But he caught them in a hot inning where they got a lot of momentum going and offensively we didn't do very much with Lynch. We tried in between innings, talked about getting the ball up, we've got to see the ball up. He's throwing a lot of changeups and a lot of pitches down in the zone, see the baseball up and bottom line is we were aggressive at pitches out of the strike zone, and you know, you can't do that when you're facing a guy that throws a lot of off-speed pitches and lives kind of at the bottom of the zone. You've got to force them to throw the ball up and swing at good pitches to hit, and we just didn't do that today. Q. The conversations with Pat after he came out, knowing it's the worst outing of his career, how did you talk to him about that? MONTE LEE: I just pat him on the back. He's been awesome for us. You hate to see it for him because he's been so good for us. I don't know if he felt at his best. I'm not sure. I haven't had a chance to talk to him. But I guarantee he's so down in the dumps based on what happened to him today; it's probably going to take him a couple days just to recover from it because he's that kind of competitor and he's that kind of kid. That kid competes as hard as anybody on our ballclub and I don't need to say anything to him right now. When the time is right, I'll say something to him. But I feel for him. He's been such a big part of our program, such a big part of our team and I hate that it happened to him today. Q. How did you fair against Lynch in the past? MONTE LEE: We only faced him earlier in the year and he threw very well against us. Q. For those of us not in the dugout or at the team hotel, it looks like when something bad happens, that the heads slump and the shoulders slump and maybe a little bit of the fight has gone out of the team. Did you sense that at times? MONTE LEE: I don't think it's necessarily that the fight has gone out of the team. I think the biggest thing is once we get our backs against the wall, our guys are pressing a little bit. We talked a lot about before the game, just trying to take the result and the outcome out of it and just play good baseball. Just play free and easy and compete, and let the results take care of themselves. That was a big message for us today. You know, the bottom line is, just look at the game. The game was in the first inning. I mean, the first inning, they score six runs before you could blink and at that point, when you give up that many runs and then you make a pitching change in the first, it's very difficult to win a ballgame when you make a pitching change in the first inning, and then you're facing a left-hander like Lynch who pitched really well against us earlier in the year, and we could not find the answer in terms of getting pitches up in the zone and putting good swings on. So we were going to have to pitch and defend today, because Lynch threw a really good game. He was really good. Bottom line is we needed it to be a lower scoring game because of the way that Lynch threw the ball. But when you give up that many runs in the first, it's very difficult to come back from that. You know, at that point, we've got to get some balls up. We've got to get some guys on base and we've got to hope that Lynch walks us and that we get multiple runners on base if somebody hits one out of the park to get the momentum in our dugout. But we didn't do that today and you've got to give him credit and you've got to give Virginia credit for that. Q. You've had success against Virginia first time around. What were your impressions of that lineup then and how they have progressed? MONTE LEE: I think they are a better lineup right now. Just look at their lineup, you've got Clement, McCarthy, Haseley, Smith, right there in the middle and then you've got Cameron Simmons, I think he's hitting sixth. Cameron is a very dangerous hitter. That guy should be hitting three or four in most lineups and he's hitting sixth. You've got Pavin Smith, and Adam Haseley, those two guys are first-rounders, okay. So you've got two first rounders hitting back-to-back in your lineup and you've got a guy like Simmons sitting sixth, that's a pretty good lineup. That's why they are the most dangerous lineup. Them and Wake Forest are probably the two most dangerous lineups in our league. Q. There's no magic elixir button to push. How do you get out of it? MONTE LEE: I'm trying my best every single day to build our confidence, to work our guys extremely hard in practice to get them better and to look at the things we need to get better at and work on and talk about them. Just trying to coach our players and develop our players to the best of my ability. Our coaching staff is fighting with them and we are trying to send the message that we are in this thing together. We are all struggling. We are not playing great baseball. Obviously I need to do a better job of coaching and get our guys ready to play and play better baseball. I don't feel like I'm doing a good enough job with our players. I feel like I'm failing with our players. But that's my job. My job is to be accountable for my team and accountable for my players and I'm always going to be accountable for my players and how we play, because that's what they brought me here to do. I can tell you this: When we practice the next day, we're going to practice hard and we're going to go right back to work and try to do everything we can to get our guys ready to play in the post-season. We are going to play in the post-season. I hope it's in Clemson. If it's not in Clemson, wherever it's going to be, we are going to try to do everything we can between now and then to get our team ready. You know, I'm as frustrated as anybody but I've got to look at myself first and I've got to find the answers. I've got to find the answers for a group of guys that believe in what we're doing. They are frustrated. They want to play better. We all want to play better. But you know, it is what it is. We have to deal with it and we've got to get better, and hopefully we can start that process here probably on Sunday. Q. Is it possible to hit a reset button -- MONTE LEE: It's a new season in the post-season. You get into the field of 64, there's 295 division one programs and 64 teams get to play in the NCAA Tournament. Clemson is going to be one of those 64 teams. That's a good thing. Once you get in the field of 64, I've been a part of some really magical runs as a coach, as a head coach and as an assistant coach where we didn't host a regional. I've been to Omaha a couple times where you didn't host a regional and I've been in a super regional where we didn't host a regional where we were four-seed. So I've seen some things happen. The bottom line is, you've got to get great starting pitching, you've got to play good defense and you've got to get timely hitting, and this team is capable of doing that. Hopefully whatever happens, we all hope we're playing at Doug Kingsmore next weekend but that's not up for us to decide. That's going to be for the committee to look at all the resumés and make those decisions. If we are at home, awesome, and if we are on the road, that's great, too. Wherever we go, we've shown in the past we can win on the road and it just takes us playing good baseball. So hopefully we can put our guys in the right mind frame, play good baseball and compete as hard as they can, whatever the scenario is. Q. Is there any situation in your years as an assistant and a head coach where you've gone into the tournament, in this kind of slump and trying to keep your team positive? MONTE LEE: I have. Yeah, I've been through it before where you struggle down the stretch and had to go on the road and play pretty well. So again, it takes one game. The post-season is a different animal all together. Everybody knows what's at stake, so everybody is fighting and clawing as hard as they can to win that first game. You've got to win that first game to put yourself in that winner's bracket game. Once you get it to the post-season, heightened awareness peaks with the players, and as a coach, you pretty much sit back and watch them play. The work is done. I mean, we've worked as hard as we can to get to that point. I think the guys understand what it takes as a team to be successful. You just hope your guys are ready physically and mentally and they go compete as hard as they can. 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
|