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NCAA MEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIESJune 21, 2012Bobby BrownAndy LopezOMAHA, NEBRASKA Arizona – 10 THE MODERATOR: Congratulations, men. Andy, give us an overview. COACH LOPEZ: First and foremost, that's one of the classiest, most successful college baseball coaches this profession will ever find. I just‑‑ my heart goes out to Mike and his program. He's got a great program. He's just an unbelievable coach, unbelievable program and coach. Those guys win 40 games like I make a peanut butter jelly sandwich, they do it every year. We're very thankful. Very thankful to be victorious today. They obviously helped us a little bit in that first inning defensively, which was very uncharacteristic of a Florida State team. And, again, it's just remembrance that it's a game played by young people, and we got some breaks today. Q. Andy, just talk about the level of play of your team. Seemed like you guys are just flawless right now. Do you kind of get the feeling that you're a little invincible at this point? COACH LOPEZ: I don't know if I've ever felt that. I'm not sure we're invincible. In fact, I'm quite confident we're not invincible. We're playing good baseball. But, honestly, we've done that for more than just a weekend or so. I mean, as I said a couple days ago, in my opinion, after we lost the Oregon Sunday game, close game, 2‑1, I got thrown out in the seventh inning of a 1‑0 game, didn't want to get thrown out, quite candidly, but that's another story. Anyway, I grabbed the group together and said: Hey, listen, if you want to win the Pac, if you want host the Regionals, if you want to do the things that we've set as goals, we can't lose another series from here on. End of story. To be very candid with you, they've played exceptionally good baseball from that point on. And so far so good. They'll continue the process, hopefully. Q. Robert and Bobby, both of you, number one, talk about your home run, what you saw, and, number two, talk about having that big lead early. How does that kind of change your mentality as you go through a game? BOBBY BROWN: For the home run, you know, I just had a 2‑0 count and saw a nice fastball middle in and put a short stroke on it. That's been kind of our mentality the whole year and everything. Getting big really does help the team out, kind of settles out the whole team, and Kurt pitched well from there and it just worked out well for us. ROBERT REFSNYDER: Anytime you get a really big lead with Kurt, it's a really good feeling. It has been ever since I've been a freshman. Every time you get a couple of runs, especially six runs, especially on a bunch of uncharacteristic errors by Florida State, it helps our confidence and everything like that. Home run. Actually, funny part is I felt terrible in batting practice. I was popping up everything. I was glad Coach Lopez didn't see, yelling at me a lot. But I grabbed Coach Siegle, our assistant coach, went in the cage, worked with him five, ten minutes. If I feel good going into the game, I usually hit pretty well. So finished on a good round. And my home run, I just saw he was pitching me out, Florida State has been pitching me out a little bit. So I was looking away and kind of reacted on a fastball in. Anytime you get away from Hi Corbett, it's nice, hit the ball in the air, it might go. Q. Andy Lopez and Kurt Heyer. Whenever guys get on base with you, Kurt, seems like you're able to kick it in another level as a pitcher, and the number of innings you pitch, you've managed it with almost giving up a hit per inning, but you still get out of it. How are you able to do that? Both of you comment on that. KURT HEYER: I don't know. It kind of just happens. I got a great defense behind me. I'll give up a lead‑up hit and then we'll turn a double play and then I'll be out of the jam. But, yeah, Lopez is always telling us they average one hit per inning and then it's over. So usually he's probably like, whew, okay, you got one hit off him, okay, now we'll just go from there. So, yeah, like 150 innings with 150 hits. I never really thought I would do that, but I'm just happy the damage is not as severe. COACH LOPEZ: He does a good job. One thing you would hope that your Friday night CEO, starter, horse, whatever you want to term it, he's really easy to work with from the standpoint if you go out with a pitching plan, which we do inning by inning, after the inning's over we'll go through the next four hitters, how we'll attack this hitter, where we're going, what strengths, weaknesses, what have you. For the most part he's probably as good as I've had in a long time of being able to apply that plan. I mean, a pitching plan is of no value at all if the guy can't get the ball where you want it. He's very, very good at, hey, we need to work on the other half of this guy. We need to go under the hands, need to go side to side, what have you. He'll give his share of hits only because he's around the plate so much. He's a strike thrower, so if you throw your club into the zone, you have a chance of making contact and getting a hit. But he really does understand the plan we're trying to apply. And more than understanding it, he's able to apply it. Q. Rob, Kurt, and Andy, could you talk about the journey when you were freshmen until now? KURT HEYER: Well, it's been fantastic. We came to campus three years ago coming in here with a mission. Lopez recruited me and Rob, and saying that we were going to play for a national championship. And we've been through the ups and downs, and we've been able to prosper from the last two years and learning and getting more mature and learning from Lopez from his teachings of how to win. Because every team that comes here wants to win, but they don't know how to win. And we've been able to execute and get the job done for the most part. ROBERT REFSNYDER: Real bumpy road freshman year. Highs and lows sophomore year. I think we had the talent but the chemistry wasn't there. Some of the older guys and younger guys didn't gel well. But ever since I was a freshman, I've had a couple of guys I've bonded with like Bobby. Really showed me as a freshman how to work hard and go about your business. And Lopez has always been‑‑ in my life he's really just given me great advice on and off the field. So it's been really a great transition from being a high school baseball athlete to coming to college. But having the experience of losing and feeling what it feels like to go back on a charter plane and nobody talks, it's a depressing feeling. I think we're on a mission this year, myself and Kurt and the other juniors, to really get to the College World Series because that's always been my goal and now we're in the position to win for a national title. And it's exciting. But that's what we came here to do. So I couldn't say enough about my recruiting class and Bobby and Coach Lopez, though. COACH LOPEZ: It's an easy group. It really is. I've always felt there was a correlation. It's a debatable situation. But I always thought there was a correlation between what they do off the field and what they do on the field. By "off the field" I mean classwork. Mejias brings a 3.0, Refsnyder is a 3.0; Dixon is over 3.0. Johnny Field is a 3.5. And Gilbert is a 3.0. And Riley Moore is a 3.0. And Konner Wade is a 3.0. They all go to class, do the right things. I have two rules in my program, I've had it for 36 years: Be on time and do things right. That's it. Be on time and do things right. Doing the things right, they learn day in and day out we've got to hustle and keep the clubhouse clean. If we leave a visiting dugout, we keep it cleaner than when we arrived. Things like that and I sometimes raise my voice in encouragement to these guys. Right, fellas? KURT HEYER: I have a 3.0. COACH LOPEZ: Oh, yeah, Kurt's a 3.0. Easy group to work with. Been an easy group for three years. They really have. I think the biggest thing‑‑ and I know it's going to sound crazy, unless you're in my shoes, we moved to Hi Corbett. We host it. We host it. I've taken clubs‑‑ and I have to tell you the truth, in 2008 I thought that was the best club I had at Arizona with two first‑round arms and we're going as a 1 seed to Michigan and then going to Miami and all over the country, and we didn't get it done. We got beat in that championship game in the Super Regional in Michigan; and quite candidly I remember flying home and telling my wife: Truth be told, I've got to go find another job, we have to go somewhere else; we're never going to host here. Kendall, you and I had conversations, we had conversations, I gotta find another job. We're never going to host. We're never going to host here. Call that selfish, call it what you want, but my whole mission is, when we bring a recruiting class in, is to get them to this position. And by the grace of God, I've been very fortunate, other than 2008, every recruiting class I've coached in college baseball has been to the World Series. And 2008 should have been in the World Series but we didn't. And what they've accomplished, and they're not done yet, I hope, but what they've gotten done up to this point is basically what we strive for every day. We talk about Omaha every day. We do our drills based off of being in Omaha. These guys will tell you we do double cuts in silences, run defenses in silence, because you can't hear when there's 24,000 people out there. But going to Hi Corbett was, in my honest opinion, that was the deal‑breaker for this group. I think these guys were at home. They played well. They got excited. Then they hosted a Super Regional. And it's just kind of carried on, it really has. Q. Kurt, four of their first six guys got some pretty good swings off you. What kind of adjustments did you make after that? And I guess just talk a little bit about your overall performance today. KURT HEYER: First of all, I'd like to tip my hat to the Florida State offense. They did a good job putting the ball in play. They're trying to get my pitch count up. And they did. The only thing I would probably take away from my performance is that I can't walk three guys. That's unacceptable. That's very uncharacteristic of me. One walk I'll tolerate, but three is unbelievable for me. You take away those three walks, I'm probably still pitching. But no matter what I did, I think they did a good job putting the ball in play. They did a good job, flat out. They got nine hits off me. That's pretty good. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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