2022 WOMEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIES

June 8, 2022

Mike White

Hailey Dolcini

Mary Iakopo

Bella Dayton

Texas Longhorns

Postgame Press Conference

Oklahoma 16, Texas 1

THE MODERATOR: This is the championship final Game 1 press conference featuring the Texas Longhorns.

Questions for our student-athletes, please.

Q. Hailey, after Jocelyn gets the home run, things are still fine, but do you think the two groundballs back to you that could have been double plays, did that maybe shake you up or shake the team up morning anything else?

HAILEY DOLCINI: Yeah, I mean, errors are costly.

Q. Mary, what did you think of tonight pitching as a whole from your vantage point?

MARY IAKOPO: They're really frickin' good. Hats off to their one through nine.

Q. Hailey, I know the recipe for y'all have been this post-season you're lose, your confident, carefree. Did you sense maybe in the first inning just the moment was a little jittery or overwhelming for you or the whole team? What were y'all feeling in the first inning?

HAILEY DOLCINI: Yeah, I think it's just (tearing up). Sorry.

THE MODERATOR: Bella, could you answer that, please?

BELLA DAYTON: I didn't feel like we were tense in the first inning. I think we actually enjoyed hitting first, to be up in the first inning. Which for me personally I kind of like to set the tone for everybody.

MIKE WHITE:

As Hailey is starting, we always have our back on defense as well.

Q. Bella, you had the two doubles. What did you see and why were you seeing it so well?

BELLA DAYTON: I kind of just tried to tell myself to be easy, to be early. With that being said, being early helps me see the rise ball a little better.

Hitting against her the other day, I was getting under everything, so my plan was just to try to stay on top of everything, which helped me a lot this game.

Q. Mary, you're such a great player and a great leader, your team didn't play well tonight or you didn't get it done, but you do have a chance tomorrow. You have your left hander ready. How will you try to rally your team to get them going?

MARY IAKOPO: Just got to remind everybody that our back has been against the wall every week we've played, so it's just like another elimination game.

So go out all in.

Q. With the success you have had in elimination games so far this post-season, any particular lessons that you're carrying with you into tomorrow to reset your mentality?

BELLA DAYTON: I mean, we try and just forget what happened and know that tomorrow's a new day a new game. I mean, we're starting 0-0. We're starting fresh. We're capable of facing anybody that comes in our way.

HAILEY DOLCINI: Yeah, just like she said, nothing from today carries over. So you learn from it and you try not to make the same mistakes again. Then we just come out and play loose. I think we lost a little bit of that today.

MARY IAKOPO: Just remember that the worst has already happened and play carefree, loose. That's all we can do.

Q. All of y'all have been in situations where you play, then you have to turn around and go again. What do you do in the hotel tomorrow? Watch TV? I don't know. Hang out, goof off?

BELLA DAYTON: I mean, we do tend to like come together a lot and just make sure that we all have the same kind of mindset in line, that we do forget the day before and that we know what we're capable of.

I know I'm very superstitious, so I kind of changed things up a bit after what happened. Other than that, we still go towards our plan. We watch what we've done, what we will change in the future.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach, please.

Q. Jocelyn's home run, 2-0, it's fine, but did you think not getting those double plays, leaving the door open for them to make it 5-1, how big was that?

MIKE WHITE: Well, there's turning points in the game. That was certainly one of them. You can't give them second chances. You have to make every play you can.

We had several of those opportunities throughout the game. I'm just really proud of this team and what we've accomplished, where we're at.

It's tough right now. It's very tough for them. Nobody wanted to go out and not get the job done. We talk about pressure in the first inning. There was a lot of pressure in the first inning. A lot of bases walked or run in. We get a big hit here or there, it can change. We didn't capitalize. That's a team that has been there and done it before, their home crowd, 12,000 strong, maybe 12 and a half. It's very tough.

I challenge any one of you out there to come out there and do that. So they're just young women, 22 max probably, being put in situations where there's a lot of people looking at them, there's a lot of pressure.

So, you know, hopefully we learn from that. That's what kind of stress to the team was, those that are coming back, what did you learn from the experience. Because it can't be for nothing.

Yeah, we want to forget it, we don't want to remember it, but you have to learn from it. Obviously OU has had the advantage of being out here multiple times.

For us to get better, we've got to kind of do the little things better that we didn't do tonight. Giving too many opportunities, made too many mistakes with the at-bats. Like Mary said, they're good. There's a reason why they've been ranked number one from day one, and still are.

Q. Every time Jocelyn hits a home run or does something, people wonder why no one pitches to her the way she's hitting this tournament. Then you see home runs from the player directly behind her, bottom of the their lineup. What is that like as the head coach trying to figure out if there are weaknesses in that lineup?

MIKE WHITE: Well, every hitter has a weakness. There's no doubt about it. They fail half the time.

MIKE WHITE: Right? She's batting .512. She's one up, which is pretty tough to do. She does fail half the time. We're not making the pitches to get her out, or they're making the adjustments, knowing what we're throwing. There's a couple ways to look at it.

If you look at the first home run, look at the replay, it hit her halfway up the handle. That's a lot of power, by the way. Can you say that's a bad pitch? Not necessarily.

So sometimes you just got to tip your hat, it's their night, they were fired up. We just got to find ways to get them out. You got to throw their timing off. We didn't really have an off-speed to do that with, so they were able to kind of really be on time and be on plan.

It makes it very difficult.

Q. Back in the first inning before Oklahoma sent 10 batters to the plate, you made a couple pitching changes. Can you walk through the strategy behind that.

MIKE WHITE: Obviously they had Hailey's number. I don't want to leave her out there to get roughed up any more. She was not backed down by them. If you look at the positive side the it, she was attacking them. Is that better than walking the house, probably not? So we talked about it before, we got to challenge 'em. We challenged 'em and they won the challenge. That's the way it goes.

So I made a pitching change and went to I think it was Sophia Simpson. Soph, there were some personal issues there that we had to deal with. I don't want to get into that.

I hope that doesn't come off the wrong way. But she couldn't continue. It wasn't anything she did or anything we said or anything else. She just couldn't continue because of health reasons basically.

So we had to make a change. It wasn't really a change I wanted to make. Made the change, went to Logan Hulan, who did fairly well at the time, then went to Shea O'Leary.

It was like an avalanche. Once it starts going, it starts gathering steam, and it's harder to get it to stop.

Q. Did you consider walking Alo in this game? And then Tiare Jennings, what does she bring to this lineup?

MIKE WHITE: Well, yeah, I mean, what about Coleman? You can start going down the list here, what they're doing.

But Jennings was on time the whole night. I think she had four hits or something, right? Five RBIs, that's a pretty decent night.

But, no, I mean, we've got to score runs to beat them. I mean, by walking them, you're just putting one more runner on. They're going to put up some numbers, four or five, we got to find a way to score seven. That's the way it is, you know.

We've seen Trautwein enough times. We had her on the ropes. Then we started swinging at pitches out of the zone. Our discipline was not what it needed to be. It changed because they stuck up five on us. That's what happens.

Again, I'm talking about young players. We got experienced players out there that understand we're still where we're at. I told them this before, don't worry about what they score, worry about what we score. And we didn't do that. I tried to calm them down and get them to relax, let the game come to them, force the pressure on them. They've seen Hope enough times, especially in the last two or three years.

Again, it's difficult sometimes with young players.

Q. You mentioned having to score. If it is Jordy Bahl tomorrow, what did you see from her in studying that UCLA game versus how she kind of attacked you during the regular season?

MIKE WHITE: I'm not going to tell you my secrets (smiling). That would be crazy for me to do that.

She's a great pitcher. She throws hard. She's got multiple pitches. We're just going to have to come out and do the best we can, without a doubt.

Q. Oklahoma has pretty much lived on this stage. Y'all, this is your first time here. After how poorly today's game went, does just getting this out of the way sort of help them a little bit acclimate to being in this environment?

MIKE WHITE: Yes, if we learn from it. If we understand what happened and make the adjustments. That's what we've got to do. If we go out and speed the game up like we did today, we're going to get the same result probably.

Again, that's going to be a learning experience for us. Going forward as coaches, we're going to hit that with the team tomorrow and see what we can do.

Q. Were you trying to preserve Estelle for tomorrow?

MIKE WHITE: Looks that way, doesn't it (smiling)?

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.