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NCAA MEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIESJune 21, 2013Pat CaseyMichael ConfortoAndrew MooreOMAHA, NEBRASKA Mississippi State – 4 THE MODERATOR: Pat, could you give us an overview today. COACH CASEY: First of all, congratulations to Mississippi State. Very, very good club. Having said that, I'll take our guys, I love them. Had a heck of a year. Couldn't get some things to go for us today offensively, and I thought Mo gave us a great effort. And just weren't able to move runners offensively, weren't able to get the right situation to happen. And having said that, I don't want to take away from what these guys have accomplished this year. It's very difficult when 18 show up at Omaha and seven of them lose their last game and feel like they had a poor season. So we're not hanging our head at all. Our guys are obviously disappointed, and I think they're more disappointed in the fact that they won't get a chance to play together as a team again. But Oregon State University's very proud of our baseball team. THE MODERATOR: Questions? Q. Michael, going into this game, Mississippi State had trouble in the past getting their starters past three or four innings. What's Graveman been able to do against you guys to keep you guys off balance offensively? MICHAEL CONFORTO: Graveman did a great job today and pounded the zone, was able to throw the ball on either side of the plate, gave us some different looks from the mound offensively that we didn't see the first game. And at least for me, he switched things up. Kept us off balance. And it's tough for us to get the barrel on the ball. Q. Andrew, you were kind of cruising along there in the fifth inning, two quick outs and things went south on you. Was it just a matter of you guys getting good hits? Can you kind of describe the at‑bat with Renfroe and the home run? ANDREW MOORE: Yeah. They just‑‑ like you said, got two quick outs and maybe just got a little bit lazy there and had some good at‑bats and made some hits. And Coach called it, I think 3‑1, zero and curveball. Tried to bury it because I knew we had a base open. I made a mistake, left it open a little bit. He's a great player, and he made me pay for it. Left a few pitches up, and they're a great team. When you do that to great teams like Mississippi State, they're going to get some runs to show for it. So they had a great effort out there. Q. Pat, this game and even the Indiana game, runners in scoring position, just not like you've been all season, just the pitching you faced here or couple bad nights? COACH CASEY: There's no bad nights in Omaha. Certainly isn't the way we planned it, and isn't a lack of effort. Couldn't get a hit when we needed one. I think that's happened before to all teams. And obviously we're facing very good pitching. That's why they're here. And Mississippi State got here with their pitching, and the starter was good. Thought we did a good job with Ross Mitchell. Thought we had a chance to create an inning and didn't get it done. Q. Talk a little bit about Andrew Moore. He had a good outing here in Omaha, maybe other than the last inning, just talk about his effort and how he did on the main stage here? COACH CASEY: Did great. Freshman kid coming out and pitching, and not very many freshmen in the country are going to come out, throw your first game and then throw again. He had plenty of rest. Had almost a full week's rest, and he was sharp, like he said. He was trying to bury the breaking ball on Renfroe, that's why we called it. And he left it up and Renfroe's first round draft pick and made him pay. And I can't say enough about Mo. He's been for us all along. He's going to give us an effort every time he goes to the mound, no question about that. Q. Andrew, the first seven hitters and their lineup all had at least one hit. How tough just to get through that order? ANDREW MOORE: The big adjustment I wanted to make today was I had no problem getting to two strikes last time. It's just making that outpitch. And even today I was making some not too bad pitches, but they were getting the barrel on it and just getting some hits. They made me work all day. Obviously not having any strike outs today, I didn't make the adjustments as well as I needed to. Like Coach said, Renfroe's a first round draft pick, and Ray's a stud. And I just made some mistakes and they made me pay for it. Q. Pat, why the decision to start Andrew over Jace today? COACH CASEY: He's been starting for us all year long, and obviously he was the right guy to start. He started on Saturday and went on Saturday all year long. It was a Friday. He had all the rest. To start a guy that hadn't started all year long in Jace Fry, obviously we didn't want to do that. We wanted to make sure that Mo said was ready to go. He woke up this morning and he said he felt just like he does every other start. He pitched as well today as he pitched the other day. Like you said, he made a mistake on one pitch, and the two guys before him both hit ground balls and one of them was up the middle, and the other one was in the 4 hole and that's the way baseball goes, and Mo was fine. Q. Michael and Andrew, if you could for a moment reflect on what this experience has meant to you and what it could mean to the Beavers moving forward with so many players coming back? ANDREW MOORE: It's an incredible experience coming to Omaha. A game like this is just going to make us work harder next year. And we have a solid core coming back. So we're just going to have to take all the pain we're feeling right now and just use that as inspiration to get better, get bigger and all that. Once next year starts, can't let this affect us. Just gotta move forward. MICHAEL CONFORTO: You know, Omaha's a crazy place. Had a lot of fun while we're here. It's just frustrating the way we ended it. So I think there's a lot of positives we can take from this. We're going to grow as a team next year, we've got a lot of guys coming back. At the same time, it's really tough seeing those senior guys go, those drafted guys go. I think this team is as close as any team's ever been. And it's tough. Q. Pat, can you talk about Michael's play out in left field the catch at the wall. Did you guys think that gave you some momentum early on and could you talk about his play overall in the tournament in left field, whether it was the glove or arm? COACH CASEY: Fantastic play. We've been talking about all year long about how good a defender he is. It gets overlooked. Talked about that in the Kansas State series and our meetings before with ESPN. I don't know how many assists he has, but he gets great jumps on the ball. Yes, it was an inspiration to our club. We were fired up. It's really hard to sit here and reflect on a game that's been over for 20 minutes on what happened in the game when we're thinking about playing 60 some games for these guys. So I'm extremely proud of our club and Michael is one hell of a defender. And we played‑‑ we could play better baseball. But we played as well as we could play today and, obviously, his catch, the catch down the line, he threw the guy out. Threw the guy out against the guys the other night. Michael's just a tremendous outfielder. Q. Pat, what did they tell you on the interference call? COACH CASEY: Well, I didn't know he called interference. That's the first time I've been out of the dugout all year long. Believe it or not I haven't been thrown out for two years. I can tell you the guy at first base was safe. I haven't seen the replay. If Kav's out of the line, he couldn't have been out of the line more than a fraction. It didn't affect the play. The guy made a clean throw to first. Just got to me a little bit right there when I see a guy beat a ball out and we're struggling to score runs, you're in the College World Series, and don't‑‑ I haven't seen a replay. I think the guy missed the call at first base. The tape won't lie. I don't know if Kav went out of line because I wasn't watching that. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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