|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA MEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIESJune 24, 2011Tim CorbinJason EspositoSonny GrayAaron WestlakeOMAHA, NEBRASKA Florida – 6 THE MODERATOR: Coach, give us an overview. COACH CORBIN: I'm not going to sit here and try to sum everything up. Just congratulations to Florida. I mean, they played well all year. To be honest with you, nothing against the other two coaches, but I hope they go off and win it. Tough ballgame, obviously, for us and the way it ended. We had aspirations of taking it a step further. There's no complaints with the effort level of the kids. We did everything we possibly could, some things that we didn't handle maybe appropriately. But, you know, when you've got kids that are willing to battle the way we did and come back the way we did, I don't think many people thought at 4-1 that we would. But we did, and gave ourselves a shot. And they just got us at the end. THE MODERATOR: Questions? Q. Tim, if you could talk a little bit about just the small ball, fielding the bunts, and how that kind of got you there in the eighth inning. COACH CORBIN: It did, we had the right athlete on mound though. Sonny's taken care of so many short balls during the season. They found a way to bunt the ball in difficult triangles, and we weren't able to get an out of it. I think that was probably the toughest part of it, even if we didn't get the runner at third, just trying to get an out. And extended. It's difficult. But that's the way it goes. They executed the small ball pretty well. We knew they were going to do it. We knew we could handle it, and we just didn't. Q. Coach, the decision to go with Sonny back out there in the eighth after a long top of the inning. I think it was maybe 126 pitches or so. COACH CORBIN: I don't care what the number of pitches was. He wanted to go back out there. That's all there is to it. You're not going to take the ball away from him or else you're going to fight him; rather give him the ball and let him pitch. Q. Sonny, were you starting to feel like you were wearing down physically at that point, or did you still feel strong? SONNY GRAY: I thought if I was going to wear down or thought I was getting tired, then I would obviously have told Coach. I wanted the ball. I went back out there and they put the things together and we were able to scratch two runs in the eighth inning. That's all there is to it. Q. Aaron, can you talk about getting into the Florida bullpen and getting past Panteliodis and how that livened some things up for you offensively? AARON WESTLAKE: Well, after we put one up in the first and then Panteliodis did a good job of utilizing the outside part of the zone, utilizing the strike zone, giving him a little bit on the outside corners. He was just utilizing that. We put some pressure on him midway through the game. We've seen their bullpen plenty of times, so we know what we had to do. And I thought we did a great job as a team. They're the best bullpen we've seen in the country. So I thought we did a great job against them. It's just one of those things where we came up short. And that's a credit to them. But we did -- we battled our asses off and no regrets. Q. Jason, could you talk about the seventh and eighth innings offensively for you guys. You get runners on base and rally back and get some runs, but I think both innings you leave the bases loaded. How are you guys feeling after those innings? JASON ESPOSITO: That's what you want to do, you want to put runners on base, you want to try and score them. Unfortunately, we didn't. And it's part of the game. But just gotta score runs to win and we didn't. Q. For all of you, Sonny, Aaron, Jason, if you don't mind, this is somewhat of a rhetorical question. Could you talk about how you're feeling at this point in terms of what you guys did accomplish this season and if that's hard to balance with the emotions of losing this game. SONNY GRAY: We put together a great season. Nothing to be ashamed of. We battled throughout the year and, unfortunately, we came up short two games here to Florida. They're a good team, but I don't think they're any better than us. I just think they're able to get the best out of us. So, I mean, it's just a bad feeling. You don't want to feel this way, but eventually every team's going to feel this way except for one. Unfortunately, we weren't that one. AARON WESTLAKE: We battled back. And they were just able to put a couple of runs up in the last part of the eighth. And even in the top of the ninth, we still battled. We're never going to give up. And losing, it sucks, but you're not going to feel good right now. You want to get to the championship. You want to win. That's why we're here. I can't say anything more. It sucks right now. But once we get maybe back to Nashville, stuff like that, one down, regroup as a team, we'll look over this year and we're going to be proud of each other. I mean, this is the best year I've ever had. And I love all these guys, and it's making memories. This is history. You'll never forget about it. So once we get back, we'll look back and see how well this season we did. JASON ESPOSITO: It's tough. Because you know what you go through with these guys, especially for three years, the way you go through with Corb, but I'm happy to play for Vanderbilt University. Knowing how hard we work and knowing we do the things the right way and we practice hard and we never gave up, and we gave it everything we had this whole year, and I'm proud of our 54 wins, and I'm proud of all the younger guys who stepped up. I'm just proud to play for Vanderbilt. Q. Tim, kind of piggybacking on that, talk about what this step means now moving forward. This is obviously, like Jeff said, a weird time to talk about it, but what does it do for you as you go forward? COACH CORBIN: I'm not thinking about forward, right now. Actually I'm thinking about backwards because when you have to sit maybe two, three hours from now and reflect on what you've done with a group of kids, you have to think about what you've accomplished. You can't think forward right now. Right now I want to take my phone and computer and dump it in the Tennessee River and just spend some time with these guys, because this is the toughest moment a coach, coaches, players can go through. It's when you grind out days and hours together. And this particular team will be like no other we've had at the university, in my opinion, in terms of their selfless behavior and the way they exhibited themselves in the classroom and on the field. It's just tough to sum up and look at them right now and explain all of that. You know, I've always said it's a car that's going 100 miles an hour and slams on the brakes. Tomorrow they're all gone. That part stinks. That's not fun. That's not fun at all. I just hate to see it come to an end. But it does. And life moves on. 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
|