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NCAA WOMEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIESMay 30, 2019Mike CandreaJessie HarperTaylor McQuillanDeJah MulipolaOklahoma City, Oklahoma Arizona-3, Washington-1 THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Arizona. Taylor, could you tell us a little bit about, as you got into late innings, what is it like to pitch in a game where a single pitch can make the difference? Mentally what was your approach in the late innings and extra innings? TAYLOR McQUILLAN: As you all could see, we had home runs flying out of the park today. Those were the pitches that had the timely at-bats in this game. Earlier in the game I felt a little too relaxed. I tried to really relax myself. I later realized that I'm a little bit better when the butterflies are put into formation as the pitchers are coming. This is our first time here. It's a different feeling. I think we had to get used to it pretty quick. But I think we did a pretty good job of doing that today. DeJah came up in the big moment and we got the key outs when needed in the eighth innings. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Taylor, you mentioned butterflies. Did you have a second when you stepped out onto the mound to soak it all in? TAYLOR McQUILLAN: Yeah, I think the key thing for me to reset in that game was the home run, the first pitch home run right after Jessie's in that inning when Sami Reynolds came up. This is it, we're in a game now, this is the big moment, we got to handle the pressure and take it and run with it. Like I said, it's our first time here. There's butterflies everywhere. Our team's motto is: One team, one heartbeat. We use the butterflies getting into the formation. It's okay to go out and be a little nervous. You have to align them and keep them in formation throughout the entire game. Q. DeJah, I think you mentioned yesterday the Navy SEAL training you went through. You hit the home run, you beat a Washington team you've struggled against. How does that training help you? DEJAH MULIPOLA: I think when you're under pressure, we had a pool workout where we had to take our wet sweaters off in the pool while you're treading water and put them back on. You feel a lot of pressure. It's a life-or-death situation because you're going to drown if you didn't do it right. In the moment, you know you have people around you that are supporting you and are there to help you. I knew whether I was get going to get on base or Rylee Pierce was going to. I had to pass that to my teammates, know I had other people behind me. That was in the back of my mind. I was going to go up there, have a good at-bat. If I couldn't do it, my next teammate could. Q. Talk about being in this moment, enjoying not just the success of winning a game like this, being around your teammates. JESSIE HARPER: I think what's great about this tournament is that it inspires a next generation. The key with this is to continue to grow softball. I remember watching this as a little girl. I'm super excited for our team to be here. It's an honor to play against these teams. At the end of the day I want to inspire the next generation. I think that's what is key. As long as we can continue to make it far, play our game, we'll be set. For me, that's pretty much it. DEJAH MULIPOLA: Same for me. I feel like I'm the little girl watching college players on the TV. I'm like a kid in the candy shop. We have a bat girl that is eight years old, she's having the time of her life. To show her we're having fun, this is the peak of the mountain, it's a fun game, I can encourage her, it's everything. TAYLOR McQUILLAN: They said it all. We worked really hard to get here. We remember watching it when we were young, as long as we can remember. It's different here instead of being the little girl watching it on TV. We live for these moments. These are the moments that we prayed for when we came to play college softball. These are the moments we want to be in. To be here, with our team, getting the first win in the World Series, the first win of the World Series this year, it's a great feeling. I wouldn't want to share it with anybody else but this team right now. Q. What type of statement does this give for Arizona to come back for the first time since 2010, beat an opponent you haven't been able to beat since 2017? TAYLOR McQUILLAN: Yeah, I mean, I think this was a huge win for us. They've knocked us down the past couple years. We've been knocking at the door, just couldn't get through. I think today we really showed our grit and really showed we could push through. It just shows that we're a team. We finally created this team unity that we have on and off the field. We're using it to our advantage right now. We're capable of doing amazing things, as you can see that we did today and in the post-season. So far, that's what we're working with. That's been our strong suit this entire team in post-season. DEJAH MULIPOLA: I think we mentioned a lot against Washington that we were beating ourselves against the pitching. I think it kind of showed the fight that we had. I mentioned earlier, somebody asked me how did you know this team was going to go to OKC, when did you get a feeling. I kind of knew after the UCLA series we had fight. We kind of just showed it again in this series. We kind of took it personal that we got swept at home. To come back, have Washington our first game, to do what we did to them was just nice. JESSIE HARPER: What they said was all true. I felt the same exact way. When you get to the third person, they said it all (laughter). One thing we did know is we've played them before. We knew what they had. Likewise, same thing. But like DeJah said, they swept us at our home field and that was not going to happen again. At the end of the day it's what happens here right now. Happy to get that first win under our belt. Awesome to go extra innings and come out with a big win. Looking forward to tomorrow now. Q. There's a lot of players from southern California represented in the tournament, you three included. Do you know a lot of people from youth softball that are also competing on other teams? How do you think growing up playing softball in southern California prepares you for this stage? JESSIE HARPER: From the L.A. area especially, the southern California area, I think that's where you find a lot of really good softball athletes. I say 'athletes' because we can play multiple sports. What I think was special, we all grew up playing or competing against each other. Although softball has gotten big, it's a close-knit community, we're all playing against each other growing up. With the social media aspect, like Instagram, we follow each other, know what everyone is doing. We followed each other growing up. We finally made it here. It's a very cool experience, for sure. DEJAH MULIPOLA: In southern California, we have the OC Bat Busters, we have about 20 girls at this tournament. It's awesome to see your friends are on the other team, but at the same time you're still competing against them. It's nice to know you reached this level and both made it to the World Series. TAYLOR McQUILLAN: Like they said it, I think when we went to the opening ceremonies they had the other night, all of the old players together were taking pictures. They had a Corona Angels picture, the Team USA pictures. Bat Busters had 20 people just in one picture. You send them to the coaches. They're very humbled by it. It's a humbling photo because you sit there and see all these players that are at these colleges going to the World Series, playing against each other when they used to play with each other. That's what makes the competition fun. You know the people you want to compete against. It's a competition within the overall game. Makes it really exciting. There's a lot of southern California people here, but that's part of the draw, a huge part of college softball is southern California. Q. DeJah, on the home run, were you looking for a certain pitch? Did you know it was gone? DEJAH MULIPOLA: Facing Alvelo in my first couple at-bats, I knew she was throwing me out. I was sitting on that. I think she understood I was sitting on that. She started coming in the next few at-bats. I was trying to breathe, see a pitch. I happened to see one. Actually, I didn't think it was out. When I tell that to everyone, they don't believe me. That's why I was so excited running around first base when it did go over. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, ladies. We'll continue with questions for Coach Candrea. Q. There's the potential that tomorrow you could have a rematch against UCLA. What does it take to beat them? MIKE CANDREA: Well, we've played them before, so there's a lot of -- we're familiar with one another. On this stage, at this moment, it's just about competing like we did today. You have to have great pitching. You got to play good defense. You have to have some timely hits. I think any time we're playing a Pac-12 foe, they are very familiar with us, it's going to come down to that. This game kind of brought me back to the '90s, believe it or not. I'm probably older than most of you in this room. That's what softball used to look like. You would compete, compete, compete. It was a pitcher's duel. All of a sudden someone found a way to score a run. I thought it was quite ironic today that Harper's home run went out, they came back and tied it up. Both pitchers were phenomenal. I mean, it was just a really good, fast pitch softball game today. Q. The Navy SEAL program, where did you come up with that? Did you have a day like today in mind for that? MIKE CANDREA: I had a year like this year in mind, to be honest with you. I really felt like I needed a resource to maybe give a different approach. Instead of me talking about it, someone else talking about it. I had the opportunity when I was with the Olympic team to do some training with the Navy SEALs. I thought it was a pretty powerful and neat exercise. I got contacted by this group. The one thing I liked about it was we had a Navy SEAL, we also had a guy that understood the game of baseball and softball. He could relate a lot of the stuff we were doing to the game. The only thing I really wanted to do was to put kids in different leadership roles and see how they would respond. I think that was one aspect that came out of it. The other was just paying attention to details. When you're a Navy SEAL, little things can be life-threatening. This team kind of took some of the stuff from that training and they've kind of gone with it. But this is a good group of athletes, a good group of young ladies. They worked very hard to get to this moment. Once you get here, you still have to perform. So I was very pleased today that they showed some grit. But the thing I was probably most pleased with was they handled the big moment. That's been our theme ever since we lost three games to Washington. That was the message. We didn't handle the big moment then, so it's kind of nice to see that work pay off for them. Q. Alvelo started the game after the walk, you striking out seven straight batters. What was the conversation like in the dugout to flip the script? MIKE CANDREA: She's a good pitcher. The big thing is you have to be short. You can't match power with power. Screwball, curve. We know what was there. I thought she looked really good early in the game. It's one thing to have a plan, but I don't think many of you would understand what it's like to be in a batter's box and try to face 70 miles an hour. That element right there is even tough no matter what. The big thing, I was trying to get off the knob, square the ball up, not try to pull everything. The second time around I thought we started making some adjustments. I think it began with Malia Martinez hitting the ball to rightfield. I think that kind of gave the rest of our hitters a little bit of a boost mentally. But it's a game of making adjustments. She's a tough one. She's an outstanding pitcher. Q. You talk about living in the big moment. Taylor as a senior, she's come so close to being in this moment. Talk about the growth you've seen and her performance today. MIKE CANDREA: I think sometimes your failures in life is truly what allows you to grow. Too many times in this game when you're winning all the time, I know for myself, you kind of take it for granted. But those losses kind of eat at you. I think Taylor has learned a lot of things from those moments. She's continued to work hard. I give a lot of credit to Taryne Mowatt for kind of retooling her a little bit. But I really believe the retooling for us with her was just mentally, being able to show some emotion on the mound, being able to have some energy so that she doesn't look like she's on an island by herself. I'm proud. I think that work really helped today in those moments. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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