|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA WOMEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIESMay 30, 2019Kelly BarnhillAmanda LorenzTim WaltonOklahoma City, Oklahoma Oklahoma State-2, Florida-1 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by the Florida Gators. Kelly, you had a great game. You had eight strike-outs, allowed only two hits -- sorry, nine strike-outs. The two hits were home runs. Does that speak to the competitiveness of playing in the World Series more than anything? KELLY BARNHILL: Yeah, I mean, every hitter here potentially has home run power, especially in Oklahoma City where balls fly. I think more than anything, it's just missing a spot. I missed two pitches to their best hitter on the team, so... THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Talk about what the mindset needs to be for Florida as it has to wait a day, get ready for Saturday. AMANDA LORENZ: I just think we need to flush it and just be more competitive. We have nothing to lose. I think the day off will be good for us, just to focus on the Gators, on what we can do better to be more successful next game. KELLY BARNHILL: I agree with Amanda, just flushing it, going on to the next game. You can't control what happened in the past. All you can control is what happens in the future. Q. Kelly, you mentioned the two bad pitches. You're familiar with Samantha from pitching against her last year. How do you want to pitch to a hitter like her? KELLY BARNHILL: You don't give her anything good to hit. I was trying to go a screwball inside, I just left it right down the middle. She hit it hard and far. Q. Amanda, talk about the offense and why it wasn't able to get going today. AMANDA LORENZ: Yeah, we had six hits, they got two. They had bigger hits than us. We string those together, I think we're sitting up here in a little different mood. I think we just needed to find a way to pass the bat along and have them all happen at the same time. Q. Amanda, obviously lots of players from southern California. Is there anybody from youth softball that you've gotten to reunite with? AMANDA LORENZ: I had 19 of my former teammates here. We took a big reunion picture at the banquet. That's really special. I know I wouldn't be here without them. Mike (indiscernible), Mark Campbell, all the other coaches growing up. I think there's nothing like playing in southern California, the competitiveness that you get every single weekend. There were other teams, too. (UCLA's) Rachel (Garcia), I played her all the time growing up, too. I think it's really cool. That definitely prepared us for this. We got the best competition every weekend. THE MODERATOR: Kelly, Amanda, thank you. We'll continue with questions for coach. Q. How was the offense not able to turn the six hits into more runs? TIM WALTON: We didn't have very many productive at-bats. Our outs, they made a couple nice plays defensively, but our outs just weren't very good. You can have good outs, be productive with your outs, move runners along. We didn't have that. That's the biggest key. Six hits, but yet the 21 outs, how many of them were productive? There weren't very many of them. Q. You obviously faced Sam when she was at A&M. She didn't survive an inning last year against you guys. Does she seem a different pitcher? TIM WALTON: No. Coming into this, I think Amanda was four for six against Sam in her career, finished up two for three today. She really gave up a lot of hits to Amanda, made a couple other ones that were the same, Nicole the previous time. Some of the other ones hadn't had a lot of success against her in the past. I don't think she's a different pitcher. I think she's a whole entirely different person. You look at everything about her, it's different, better in every sense of the word. She's just done a good job all the way around. It almost looks like she's completely comfortable in who she is right now competing both offensively and defensively. Q. First and second with no out, was bunting an option? TIM WALTON: Did you watch the first swing? Q. (No microphone.) TIM WALTON: Jade can't bunt. How about that? The first thing we've been practicing for quite some time is a modified version of that. Again, she touches that ball just a tiny bit softer, you have potentially bases loaded. It was an option, but it's not really an option in her game. She doesn't have that. We went to the option that we do have, that was the soft sort of slash bunt attempt on the first pitch. That's really all she has. Q. Is there a difference in mindset a team has to have when they lose the first game compared to winning the first one? TIM WALTON: I don't think it's different. I mean, I've been here many of times on this side. We played for a national championship before. I've been here many of times. We win one more game, we lose the next game. I don't think it's a different mindset. I think it's just about players being able to do what players do. I said great players step up and are great in Oklahoma City. I think that's the key. We're going to have players that step up, really enjoy competing, not dread the fact they might lose and return home without winning a game in Oklahoma City. I think really it's all about the players. It's player driven. I've done a good job of staying out of their way the entire year. Let them play softball, do what they can do. We don't do anything fancy. Pitch and play good defense, get a couple hits here or there. It's the personnel we have. I think we've identified exactly who we are. We just have to be a little bit better version of that on Saturday. Q. Will you do something to keep things loose tomorrow, or business as usual? TIM WALTON: Yeah, no, business as usual. Again, we'll try to figure out where we'll practice tomorrow, get our reps in, stay sharp. Again, have to look at the game time. I haven't gotten that far yet. Try to get them as close to 24 hours as we can between practice and competition to give them enough rest and recovery to get ready to come out win the first game, then take a game break off and then you have to get ready for the next. I think everything we have to do is just figure out how to get this out and move forward. I don't think we were any different really than what we've been for a long time. I don't know how many losses we had before the last one, but that's kind of how we've played all season long. Just the last 10 to 12 games have been a little bit more fun. We've had a little bit more energy, few more hits, couple other players. When your two, three, four go 0-fer, you're not supposed to win last time I checked. They did that again today. It's unfortunate. Not blaming them. It's really hard to win games when the middle of your lineup doesn't give you a hit, doesn't get you an RBI. It's really tough. THE MODERATOR: Thank 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
|