|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
COLLEGE WORLD SERIES: BATON ROUGE SUPER REGIONALJune 10, 2017Cody BrownAndy CannizaroKonnor PilkingtonBaton Rouge, Louisiana LSU - 4, Mississippi State - 3. THE MODERATOR: Coach, Cannizaro, we ask you to start with a few opening comments, please? COACH CANNIZARO: All right. First of all, what an incredible college baseball game. Just two outstanding teams that played extremely hard for nine innings tonight. Gosh, man, the crowd was electric. Just in terms of having Omaha and the ability to go there and the chance to go there on the line, matching up LSU and Mississippi State, I don't know how you would expect any other type of ballgame. Two teams that played extremely hard tonight. Starting with those guys, Alex Lange was sensational tonight. Just a guy that's going to compete and compete, and he's not going to give you anything. Obviously, he got into a great rhythm there after the first inning. We had him on the ropes, so to speak in the first inning, and we score a run. We've got bases loaded with one out. And guys, with that type of ability, you have to get them early or you're not going to get them. And I know everybody in this room has seen that type of performance from Alex many times where, if you let him off the hook early, he's still going to be standing out there in the seventh or eighth inning and that's what he did tonight. So I'm extremely proud of the effort of our guys tonight. Konnor Pilkington did an outstanding job for us. Pounding the zone with his fastball, threw his curveball for strikes. Kept an outstanding offensive team, shut them out for six innings tonight. He shut them out for seven, and with the 3-0 ballgame, and at that point the biggest thing you need is strikes. We weren't able to do that in the eighth inning tonight. Kind of jump started their rally. We walked Kramer, I believe, on four pitches. We started elevating the ball, and obviously they're way too talented to get away with those kind of pitches. Outstanding baseball game. Proud as heck of our guys over here and everybody in our dugout tonight. We played with so much heart and fight, it was awesome, man. Terrific night. The cool part about this series in playing in a Super Regional, guys is you need to win two. You don't have to win Saturday. You don't have to win Sunday. All they ask you to do is play two great ballgames. So we played great for seven innings tonight. We're excited to get back out here tomorrow night. We had a lot of young kids, man, that this is the first time they've been in any kind of atmosphere like this crazy place. We played great for seven. They beat us in the last two innings and they win the ballgame. So we're excited. Looking forward to getting back out here again tomorrow and jumping back in this atmosphere, and I know our guys are going to play great. Q. The decision not to go to Self early (Indiscernible) can you talk about that match-up? COACH CANNIZARO: Yeah, sure. You've got six outs to go right there. You're asking a freshman who has pitched more innings than he has in his life to go out there and give you six outs, and we're not built that way right now. We're talking about a guy that's already his shoulder injury. He's already missed weeks this year with two separate times with two different elbow issues, we're not going to be able to get six outs from him tonight. Six outs again tomorrow. Six outs again on Monday. We're not built that way right now. Peyton has been throwing the ball extremely well the last couple of weeks, and everybody in that dugout has the utmost confidence in him, and there was zero wavering at all. There wasn't even a conversation should we go to Self right here in the 8th inning. We expect Peyton to be able to get through the 8th right there, and just unfortunately, he wasn't able to do it tonight. Q. Andy, with the way your team has come back several times this season (Indiscernible). COACH CANNIZARO: Guess what comes around, goes around sometimes, huh? You know, our guys fought, man. Our guys fought. What was the last time we lost, a month ago? So our guys played so hard tonight. They left it out on the field, competed their absolute butts off, man. I'm proud as can be of our effort tonight. We just came up a little bit short. So we'll get right back at it again tomorrow night. We'll do BP. We'll do in and out, and we'll do all the same old stuff we do every single day. We'll "T" it up at 8:04 and we'll be ready to play them tomorrow night. Q. Cody, you get the big hit at 3-0. You're six outs away. Talk about the confidence you guys had in that moment, and then to have to recover from that to lose the game, how do you bounce back? CODY BROWN: You know, just getting the big hit right there to put us up 3-0, I was just looking for something out over the plate, and I got my pitch, and I gave my team an opportunity to score right there. Going on the road, especially here, it's tough to score runs especially against a guy like that. I was pretty amped that I got it up for my team. Going into the bottom of the 8th there, like Coach said, we had the utmost confidence that we were going to get three outs right there. Whoever may have been in the ninth, but it was kind of a heartbreaker. But I have the utmost confidence in our team. It just shows that we can battle and we can stay in it. We've just got to play a full nine next time. Q. Konnor, you were really coming out of the dugout, it stayed that way when that throw from man go came in from center. What did you see on that play? KONNOR PILKINGTON: (Indiscernible) doesn't look like that all the time. When he fired the ball from outfield, to get the guy at the plate, the whole dugout and all the fans went electric and absolutely crazy for him to get the out like that. And for it to be the third out to stop the run from scoring and tying the ballgame, that was a huge deal. So I had the utmost confidence in Plumlee to go out there and get the pop-up. I had the most confidence in Jake to throw to the guy at the plate. Us going out there and just getting outs like that is just huge for the dugout, huge for the momentum. It kind of cuts the other team short from where they want to be. Q. This is the fourth series that you've played. Have you made a decision yet for Game 2? COACH CANNIZARO: No, absolutely no idea. It's going to be one of those two guys, want to see how Billy's feeling tonight, see how he feels tomorrow, that type of thing. You're talking about a guy who has had 11 innings in his career before the last month and a half of the season. So he just went nine innings last week of one-run baseball against Southern Miss. So need to see how he's bouncing back. See how he's feeling. See how he felt playing catch today, because that will be a big thing for us. But it will be McQuary or it will be Barton. Q. Konnor and Cody, you mentioned the atmosphere being so electric tonight. CODY BROWN: No, not at all. I think we said it plenty of times, we're going to trust the guy on the mound. They're putting great swings on it. But as soon as I could hit that ball there, I had confidence in him to go and hit a groundball, get two outs there, and just kind of moved it along. I had confidence in that guy, confidence in our defense, and he just found his. Next time we're just going to have to be better. KONNOR PILKINGTON: As a pitcher, I usually try to stay tunnel vision and not let the crowd get to me too much. That was a point in the game where I lost my rhythm, but I had to go and get inside and really use the confidence I had in myself from the whole season to go out there and make pitches when I could. The crowd, you know, like I said before the game, it's going to be crazy. It's going to be a rowdy crowd and everything. But you really can't let it get to you. 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
|