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NCAA WOMEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIESJune 4, 2012Kendall DawsonPatrick MurphyCassie Reilly-BocciaJackie TrainaOKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA Oklahoma – 4 THE MODERATOR: Joining us from Alabama, we have head coach Patrick Murphy, Kendall Dawson, Cassie Reilly‑Boccia, and Jackie Traina. Coach, an opening statement, please. COACH MURPHY: Congrats to Oklahoma. They played a great game and hit the ball really well tonight. We had the lead there in the bottom of the fourth, and I kept saying to myself, okay, Jackie's going to get on a roll. They just really had really good at‑bats the next two innings. She left some pitches high, but they capitalized. They hit the ball really well tonight. Hopefully it will be a new day tomorrow when we play the second game. Q. Jackie, can you talk about what was happening? You haven't been hit that often and that hard this year very often. JACKIE TRAINA: I just wasn't doing as well as I, of course, wanted myself to do. They're a great ballclub. I just wasn't putting it where I needed to put it. Tomorrow's a new day. I've just got to recoup and start over. Flush it. Q. Cassie, what did you guys learn about Keilani that can help you be more productive next time? CASSIE REILLY‑BOCCIA: I think she's an excellent pitcher. And what makes her effective is she's from the left side and throws hard with a lot of movement. That's not something you see every day. So I think there was an adjustment period. Tonight, I thought we had much better at‑bats toward the end of the game than we did in the beginning of the game. I think that momentum will definitely carry into tomorrow's game. I think we'll be much more prepared to face her tomorrow. Q. Patrick, when you look over what you've gone through this season, what do you point out to gain confidence that tomorrow will be different than tonight? COACH MURPHY: That's exactly what I said at the end of the game. I said we've been here before. I said give me some examples. And four or five people yelled out, Florida, Georgia, Stanford last year. It's the same situation. We lost the first game. That's why you play two out of three. We came back all three times, won the series. I think the SEC prepares you for this, because every weekend is two out of three.  You lose the first one, you've got to learn how to bounce back and battle back. In those three situations, we won the series. Q. Can you talk about Ricketts' pitching performance? And second can you talk about the stolen base, and the suicide squeeze? Surprising stuff out there. COACH MURPHY: When you pinch run for it, you don't think you're going to squeeze with her at third base, but they did. But much better athlete than I expected in terms of running. She's a big kid, and swings a hard bat, pitches a great pitcher. But her base running and her other attributes kind of took center stage. Q. Jackie, anything you saw from the Oklahoma batters that you weren't expecting? JACKIE TRAINA: No, I knew going in there they were a great hitting team. I was expecting them to‑‑ I didn't expect them not to get ahead. I knew they were good. They're just a good hitting club. Just got to make better pitches, and that's about it. Q. Coach, they had everyone in their lineup reach base. You've talked about it needing to be a team effort. How important is that going to be the next two days for your team? COACH MURPHY: I'm going to go home to the hotel and kind of reconstruct the entire game in my mind and watch it probably a couple of times on DVD. There were a couple times where we had that same situation where we could have just continued an inning. It could have turned into a good inning or a big inning. It didn't fall for us. They had a lot of people on base, and Jackie worked out of jams early in the game. I was hoping that would come out in our favor, because I was hoping that they were going to waste their opportunities. We get one opportunity, and Kendall scores it with a sac fly, and sometimes that happens in fast pitch softball. I just think you need to pass down the at‑bats and continue an inning. She's a great pitcher. She makes it very difficult to do that. But when we put the ball in play, we were getting on base. So we need to put the ball in play a lot more tomorrow. Q. I noticed you guys were talking for a while after the game and you asked about examples at times where you guys have come back. But it seems like each player almost had something to say. I don't know if all of them did, but can you share some insight on what you guys talked about? COACH MURPHY: Well, I had said who knows or who remembers this exact same situation? And I think Cassie had some good words. Kayla Braud did, Olivia Gibson. Do you guys want to share a couple things? STUDENT‑ATHLETE: Olivia said, "Right now is when we need to be our teammates' best friends and pick each other up." We could go back to the hotel and sulk about it. But instead our team's got to have our backs and we need to knock it off right now, and get back with it tomorrow. We're still going to fight even though it didn't come out our way today. STUDENT ATHLETE: We talked about the whole year and there hasn't been one team that's beaten us twice all year. We took a lot of pride in winning series in the SEC. And just taking pride that a team doesn't‑‑ we're going to play our best every time and hopefully the scoreboard finds the end result in our favor. There have been a lot of times where our backs were against the wall, and we played our absolute best game the following day. I remember Stanford last year. I think we ran on them the second day. Then the same with Florida. They beat us the first game at Florida, and we came back and played one of our best games of the season. We've been here before, and I think we're confident that we're going to be able to put together a better performance tomorrow night. Q. Keilani is a more athletic runner than you thought she might be. Have you seen players before that size with that pitching and hitting and athleticism? COACH MURPHY: Well, there is one at the end of the table. But I think the other day I was saying there are more athletes playing the game of softball, and she's a prime example. We lose some kids to soccer. We lose some to basketball. We lose them to volleyball. But I think we're gaining too with some really good athletes for this game because we're on TV all the time. Who wouldn't want to play this game and be on TV all the time and in the newspaper? We're covered like crazy now. So I think we're gaining more athletes, and Jackie and Ricketts are a prime example of those and of that. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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