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COLLEGE WORLD SERIES

June 17, 2018

Omaha, Nebraska

Texas Tech - 6, Florida - 3

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Texas Tech coach Tim Tadlock and student-athletes Gabe Holt, Grant Little and Ryan Shetter.

COACH TADLOCK: First of all, great atmosphere. Great crowd. City of Omaha does a great job. Not a better place in the world to place baseball in June.

Brady Singer is a handful, so is Butler and Byrne. They're really good. Florida's got a really good baseball team.

That's one game. Really proud of our guys the way we went out and competed. We were going to have to do that each inning to come out on the right side of that and also have some good fortune. I think we had that.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes.

Q. Grant, you obviously saw Brady pretty well tonight. What did you see from him out there?
GABE HOLT: I knew he was going to try to pound the zone probably early and often. He's always been around the zone. He was living on the outside part of the plate. And I just tried to make an adjustment and put a couple of good swings on some balls.

Q. What was working for you tonight? Seemed like you were really pounding the zone pretty well, but what was working?
RYAN SHETTER: Early, the two-seam, trying to pound it in there for strike early, get some ground balls. Took me a few innings to find my slider and that worked, the last few innings.

Q. Ryan, can you take us through the bulk in the bottom of the third?
RYAN SHETTER: I wasn't sure what I did. I came in the dugout, heard a few guys say I might have moved a little bit, started early. But the team came back, tied it up. So it was a new ball game after that. And offense got my back right there.

Q. Grant and Gabe, second time through the line-up, second time you got to face Singer, seemed like you got more aggressive with him. Was that a conscious effort or was that, was there any conscious effort of trying to be a little more aggressive the second time through?
GABE HOLT: Following off what Grant said, he was pounding the zone the whole game. So I figured why not just get up there and swing and first good pitch I see just hit it.

GRANT LITTLE: Can you repeat the question? I'm sorry.

Q. Were you trying to be more aggressive the second time through?
GRANT LITTLE: Normally after you see the guy the first time, you get a little more comfortable. And I figured that he might try to get on my hands a little because he lives on the outer half of my first two at-bats, and tries to do that with a slider. I put a good swing on it and drove a run in.

Q. Grant or anybody, you guys are playing the defending champions. And they're up 1-0, and they've got their ace on the mound, why was this team able to sort of stay engaged and confident despite maybe an early hole?
GABE HOLT: Coach Tad preaches to us it's 27 outs. They got up early on us and we didn't panic like in the Super Regional when Duke, they jumped out to a lead on us in Game 3.

And we just kept playing and kept playing the game the right way. And we strung together a couple of good at-bats. And our bullpen was phenomenal tonight and they kept us in the game. We put a couple of good swings on balls and they happened to find holes and we put together a lot of quality at-bats tonight.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for Coach.

Q. Is there something particular about Dylan and Ryan that gives them the ability to succeed in that kind of unique situation where you have them pitching in tandem with each other like that?
COACH TADLOCK: I guess the word's out. First of all, they can both really pitch. They can both execute pitches. They're both very selfless in what they do. There's a lot of guys that in Ryan's shoes would rather start. There's a lot of guys probably when you pull them in the second inning they probably would rather not come out.

But they know what we're doing. We're doing for the good of the team and that's kind of our plan going in. And it's been kind of neat to watch.

Wouldn't ever surprise me to see Dylan go out there and go five or six. He's done it. He's done it before on less than 60 pitches. So probably the biggest thing is they're just selfless. They're guys that they're good teammates and that old saying I guess it's hard to be a great player without being a great teammate. They're both very good teammates.

Q. When you look at your lineup the first couple of innings Singer looked dominant what did you see from your lineup or what adjustments did you make against him in the middle frame?
COACH TADLOCK: You know, I'll tell you, we got an aggressive group. You don't ever have to worry too much about them moving on the ball in the middle of the plate. We probably stayed with that throughout, for the most part. But it's not a blanket deal, 1 through 9, by any stretch.

Guys had really good at-bats. I think really what kicked it off to me was Cameron Warren. He runs his pitch count up. That was just an at-bat that really set the inning up as far as that goes.

He got out. But when you see, when you get a guy up there in the 20s, you got a chance. I think he probably threw over 30 pitches that inning if I was guessing. I know that at-bat was over 10 pitches.

We're fortunate to have some guys that can swing the bat a little bit. I don't know how much coaching was going on there. They were just hunting a pitch to hit and got it and found a hole.

Q. I think it was 14 pitches for that at-bat. Seemed like that really kind of, just watching the dugout, it really seemed to energize everybody. What is it like for a team to watch a guy battle like that and against one of the best pitchers in the country?
COACH TADLOCK: Absolutely. Singer's very good it doesn't -- our guys know that you need to win pitches, get in there, compete each pitch, and see one of your teammates do that, definitely probably sends a message to the dugout, hey, we all need to go compete.

And not that they wouldn't have anyway. But just so happened that's the way it played out and it was really good at-bat, even though the results weren't at the end as far as not always going to get a hit. It's a game of failure.

Q. To follow up on your pitching dynamic with those two guys, is that borne more out of necessity or strategy when you do that? And how does it impact the way that you guys structure things going ahead in the tournament when you know you're going to have an off day and things are spread out like this?
COACH TADLOCK: It's got maybe a little strategy. And maybe it's also because it's what we need to do. We really felt like those guys could do what they're doing. They've been doing it now for however long, three or four weeks. And really originally it was to win weekends. It was really to set up Saturday and Sunday but also with the goal in mind of getting here and being able to do some damage when they got here.

Q. Florida was one of 15 hitting with runners on base and 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position. Could you talk about how you were so successful limiting Florida's hitting when they had somebody on base?
COACH TADLOCK: Usually when that happens they usually hit it at somebody or somebody's executed a pitch. So I would say one of those two things. We've probably had some good fortune in there. And we probably had some guys execution some pitches. So they have some really good hitters, but at the same time I would say our guys made some pitches when they needed to.

Q. Just your team's mentality. You guys are pretty relentless putting pressure on them seemingly every inning. What's it about this group, about their makeup, that allowed them to succeed in a high-pressure environment tonight?
COACH TADLOCK: There's a lot of good attempts in there. They're very thankful we're in the position we're in. They don't take it for granted that we're in the position we're in.

And they respect the game of baseball. And that's probably really what it comes down to. There's not too many guys in there after you win the night are going to say, hey, we got this figured out. They know you've got to go respect the game, play nine innings.

Q. Another thing that stood out was your defense, several big plays, Little makes that catch in the first, which that was a good catch. Jung makes a couple plays at third. Seemed like you had a thousand other phases of the game that you won tonight. Again, you've got a lot of guys who seem they have to ability to make the spectacular as well as the routine.
COACH TADLOCK: There is some guys in there that can really defend. I think Michael got caught in between on the one ball if you saw him, probably locked his feet up a little bit going to two hands. He probably could have ran through it and thrown the guy out.

That's part of the game, too. We hadn't been perfect by any means throughout the year. I couldn't tell you what our field percentage is. But we have a chance at short and third, those guys can really defend and obviously in the outfield, Grant and Cody can go get balls with a lot of people.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

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