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COLLEGE WORLD SERIES: LUBBOCK REGIONALJune 3, 2017Matt DeggsHeath DonicaLance MilesLubbock, Texas St. Houston St. - 0, Texas Tech - 6 COACH DEGGS: Give Tech all the credit tonight. It was a pivotal game, money game, swing game, and a Regionals game No. 2. You got to give all the guys credit. They came out, were fast and loose and swung the bats extremely well, made big plays, executed big pitches, and did what they needed to do. They looked like a top three team in the country tonight. Us, on the other hand, we didn't play our best game tonight. We've played a lot better than we did tonight. Tech played extremely well. So tomorrow's a brand-new day. It takes two losses to finish you out of this thing, and the word quit is not in our vocabulary. So we'll rest up tonight and be ready to get back after it and face a good Arizona team in the morning. Q. Heath, can you talk about the three home runs? Was it just missed locations or maybe a different caliber of hitters than you've seen this season? HEATH DONICA: Well, playing in the Southland Conference, there are a lot of good hitters in the Southland Conference. It's an experienced league with some older guys that can swing the bat as well. But, yeah, give a lot of credit to Tech. They've got some guys that can really swing it. But, yeah, I didn't execute pitches when I needed to. You know, when you're a sinker guy and you leave your fastball up over the plate, up doesn't work really well. You know, being a starting pitcher, you don't have your best stuff, but maybe once a month. You got to learn how to pitch without it. I just didn't get it done tonight. Q. Lance, can you talk about their pitcher? He had eight strikeouts tonight. I think only gave up two hits. He seemed to really be fooling you guys up there at the plate. LANCE MILES: Yeah, he did a really good job of mixing and locating his pitches. I think we could have done a better job of having quality at-bats. Me personally, the rest of the lineup, I think it's nothing that we haven't seen. Credit to him for pitching just a great game. But we've got to play better on our end. That's the thing about baseball, we get one more day to come out tomorrow and get back out there and put better swings on the ball, have better quality at-bats. We're going to face a good Arizona team who is going to do just about the same stuff that we saw tonight. So it will be a good test for us to come back out and respond. Q. Kind of the same question. Can you talk a little bit about Heath's performance tonight? COACH DEGGS: Well, you know, I really respected the performance that he had tonight. Sometimes a victory is not always on the scoreboard. I've got a lot of respect for a guy that will grind it out into the 7th when you're getting banged around a little bit like that. He competed. He's a warrior. He's going to give us everything he's got. It doesn't matter how it's going for him personally. He's going to put that aside and compete for his team, and he's going to give us everything he's got. Heath Donica will go down as one of the top two or three pitchers I've ever had. He's just the same guy every day, prepares, he works extremely hard, and he really knows how to pitch. Tech came out tonight with a really good game plan and capitalized on mistakes. That's baseball. It's a humbling game. You can go from being on top of the world one moment, one evening, and come back out the next night. You know, you get beat up like we did tonight. Q. You're very familiar with Arizona. You're going to be facing them for the fourth time. In the last two postseasons, what do you expect to see out of the Wildcats? COACH DEGGS: It will be a dog fight. I think the two ballclubs are very similar in the way they go about their business. Both play extremely hard, play with a lot of energy, love to play. You can see the passion on both sides. All the players love to play, coaches love to coach, and neither one of us want to see our season end. So whoever wins will have to absolutely finish the other guy, I promise you that. Q. Through the month of May, Donica had only given up three earned runs the entire month. Did you feel like the home run from Tanner in the top of the first gave Tech's lineup a little confidence moving forward? COACH DEGGS: No doubt. One swing of the bat changed the course of the game. That kid, Tanner Smith is a really good player. Really good player. He can really swing the bat. We had a long first at-bat, and little, gets a jam job over the third baseman's head. Our left fielder's deep. He does a great job hustling on the second, so we got the leadoff double. Tanner's sitting in the three hole and able to capitalize on a missed location, and all of a sudden, it's 2-0. I thought Heater have done a great job responding and giving us two great zeros. We had our opportunity to score after that in the bottom of the first, and Gingery was able to wiggle out of it with punch out, and us get caught on an automatic steal with a 3-2 count with Clayton Harp at the plate. So that right there is kind of your ballgame, sometimes the ballgame is in the ninth, sometimes it's in the fifth, sometimes it's in the first. But when they score two and we go first and second nobody out, second-guess, maybe drag bunted Drew, I don't know. It's kind of been our MO. Felt like he was going to get his swing off, he winds up punching Drew out, and we get the strike them out, throw them out to end the inning and a lot of momentum goes back over to the other side. Really and truly the damage was really only in a couple innings, in the first and the fifth. Other than that, it was just kind of pitchers doing a lot of damage. Q. Last thought on that. I mean, after Tanner's home run, I think Heath had retired seven straight, I believe before Ryan Long's home run. Was it just like Heath had said where location-wise on the sinker was just leaving it up on maybe all three of those home runs? COACH DEGGS: He settled down and he was able to mix a little bit and was able to start establishing a right on right changeup a little bit. Add a third pitch to the mix and got in a little bit of a groove there. We fell behind long, and he tags a fastball for a home run. They're a good ballclub. They can swing it. They're very balanced, very complete. Whoever beats them is going to have to play a very, very complete ballgame. Q. Do you have your plan for tomorrow set right now or is that something that you'll do in the morning? COACH DEGGS: Yeah, we're going to leave here. We're going to go to bed, get a good night's sleep, wake up, come to the ballpark, be ready to go. That's it, man. It's one day at a time from here on out. It's win or go home. I haven't decided who we're pitching or anything like that. Q. You said in the very beginning that you guys didn't play your best game. How much of that was on what Steven Gingery was able to do and how much was your ballclub? COACH DEGGS: Like I said when I started, give them all the credit. They played extremely well tonight. But punching out 13 times and chasing balls that are not in the strike zone, that's not our best game. Not being able to finish plays or make a play or make a routine play, that's not our best game. So couple other runs that they scored there in the fifth, you know, shouldn't have scored. We've got two plays that should have been made and they weren't. So we did not play very well, and they played extremely well. You know, the score is what it is after that. Q. When you play a team like Tech, do you feel like your team, on a scale from one to ten, that they have to play an eight or a seven or a nine or higher every time out against them to be able to have a shot? COACH DEGGS: Well, you play anybody in this game. Our formula never changes. We have to pitch it efficiently. We have to dominate routine plays, okay. We have to reach base. We have to execute, and we have to come up with a big knock. If you can do those things, I don't care who you're playing, it's going to be a ballgame. So that's our formula. That's the way we play, and we weren't very efficient at any of the three phases tonight. But it's a brand-new day tomorrow, and this game can change on a dime, so... FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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