SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE BASEBALL TOURNAMENT

May 27, 2021

Scott Stricklin

Hoover Metropolitan Stadium

Georgia Bulldogs

Postgame Press Conference

Mississippi 4, Georgia 0

THE MODERATOR: We're now joined by Coach Scott Stricklin. Before we take questions, if you would give us your general thoughts on the game today.

SCOTT STRICKLIN: I thought Drew McDaniel was really good. We just saw him on Saturday, and he scuffled a little bit on Saturday and he had a bounce-back performance. He was really good. The velocity was up. The breaking ball was sharper. His command was really good. He kept our hitters off balance. He was the difference today. We couldn't score, and I thought he was really good on the mound.

Q. Obviously, you've been pretty adamant about you believe this team deserves to be in the NCAA Tournament. How do you feel after the last two days?

SCOTT STRICKLIN: We certainly haven't played very well the last two days, but it's still the full body of work. I'll stand by my statement. If we're the best conference in the country, we should be the most represented. The strength of schedule, the RPI, 14 wins in this league is a big deal. So I still believe we're in.

The last two days weren't pretty. We didn't play very well, but our full body of work, I think we deserve to be in.

Q. Over these three games, you had 38 strikeouts offensively. I was just wondering if there's anything you can attribute that to specifically, or was it just good pitching?

SCOTT STRICKLIN: A lot of good pitching, but we didn't have a very good approach overall. Offensively, we weren't very good, no question about it. The three arms we saw all pitched extremely well. I thought McDaniel was outstanding today, and all three days, we saw some really good arms.

Offensively, we didn't have a good approach. We were not good enough to win yesterday, not good enough to win today. We've got to find a way to get better. I feel like we're going to be playing a couple more games at least, and we need to clean up offensively for sure.

Q. What is Selection Monday going to look like for the team?

SCOTT STRICKLIN: Well, we'll practice on Sunday. We'll give them Friday and Saturday off, and then we will practice on Sunday, and then we've got to figure out if we're going to practice in the morning and watch the selection show or watch the selection show and then practice. Maybe get the practice in beforehand and then watch it.

Don't know yet. We'll have to look at the weather. Sometimes the weather forecast dictates what time you practice. We'll watch it in some form or fashion as a team on Monday at 3:00.

Q. You were talking about having practice and preparing as if you're going to play. How important is that going to be over the next couple days to sort of keep that, I guess, positive momentum and positive spirit amongst the team as they're waiting to find out their wait?

SCOTT STRICKLIN: Well, two days away, I think, will help just kind of refresh everybody, and they just need to rest a little bit. Rejuvenate their bodies and their mind and clear things. Sunday, we'll get after it a little bit. We'll compete on Sunday. Might play a little intersquad and get guys on the mound and just get them moving around and start pushing and challenging.

We've got a really good group of upperclassmen that I know they're disappointed. Everybody is disappointed in the way that we played. On Sunday, we'll challenge a little bit and compete, and we'll kind of get that fighting spirit back.

Q. You talked about poor approaches at the plate. Being that it's this late in the season, does that make it a little bit extra frustrating that tough things are happening this late in the year?

SCOTT STRICKLIN: A little bit, but McDaniel was 93 and 95 and throwing 82 mile sliders and throwing them where he wanted to. Sometimes you've got to tip your cap a little bit. That being said, we've got to find a way to foul some balls off with two strikes and hit the ball the other way, and it just didn't happen today. He was really good. Our approach wasn't really good. You put those two things together, and you get a shutout.