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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMay 21, 2014Ryan DeitrichMichael MatuellaChris PollardGREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA Clemson – 5 THE MODERATOR: Coach, an opening statement? COACH POLLARD: First of all, give a ton of credit to Clemson. I thought they played great, and I thought Crownover was really, really good for them. He's a tremendous competitor, and they did a great job getting clutch hits, obviously, the clutch hit in the fourth and a clutch hit again in the 9th inning. I thought Michael Matuella pitched a tremendous ballgame and certainly gave us a good enough start to win the ballgame. Nick Hendrix did his job coming out of the pen. And Ryan Deitrich had good at‑bats. The difference in the ballgame was up until Chris Marconcini hit the groundball to first base with one out in the ninth, we didn't have an infielder make a play all day. We were content to pop the ball up in the air. We talked about the importance of forcing their infield to make plays, and we didn't adjust as the game went on, and that was the difference in the ballgame. Q. Tell me what it was like to be in your first tournament postseason game, and what you learned from it today? STUDENT‑ATHLETE: Yeah, definitely playing today, trying to treat it like any other game. Clemson is a good team, and they put some good strings on the ball and pitched really well. I would say it's fun to be out there, but obviously, not the result we wanted. We'll need to improve in the next two games. STUDENT‑ATHLETE: Yeah, we were hoping to get out of the game, but a fifth‑year senior having played a postseason competition, it was a lot of fun. It was awesome. Q. Michael, it seemed like you had a lot of success the first time, but after that, what adjustments do you think they made? MICHAEL MATUELLA: I think they started sitting on my fastball. My fastball started to get elevated a little bit. When that starts to happen, it didn't move as much, and they put a lot of good swings on the ball today. I have to do a good job getting the ball down and mixing it up a little more. But a lot of credit to Clemson. Q. Michael, did you notice a lot of first pitched balls and notice at one point they had like five first pitch swings with four runners getting on base. Was there an adjustment you needed to make there? MICHAEL MATUELLA: Yeah, in the fourth and fifth started to get some runs. After that, they were mixing it up. But like I said, that was kind of them seeing I was throwing fastball first pitch pretty frequently. So I have to do a better job mixing it up. Q. With the loss today, do you feel a little more pressure trying to make a statement to try to get into the NCAA Tournament? MICHAEL MATUELLA: Obviously, we need to win these next two games. I don't think we're going to feel more pressure, necessarily. I think we're going to take it one pitch at a time. We know we can beat any team if we play to our abilities. I don't think there is any really pressure added to us. Q. I mean? COACH POLLARD: What we've got to do first and foremost is get back to playing good baseball. If we do that, I think to Michael's point, it will take care of itself. If we start to press and feel like we need to make some sort of statement, I think we can find ourselves in here having the same conversation. Ultimately we've got to make a good adjustment with our offensive approach in batting practice tomorrow which will lead to better results, more runs across the board. We had some opportunities today, and we just didn't have the right type of offensive approach to take advantage of it. I like our match‑ups. I like our ability to pitch well the rest of the way. We've got two veteran starters going for us in the next two ballgames, and it will be a matter of us being able to make some adjustments at the plate. If we do that, I like our chances. Q. Ryan, Michael, given what happened out there today, do you feel like you let one slip away? That game was there for the taking. MICHAEL MATUELLA: Yeah, we were down 3‑2, and we were still in the game up until the last inning and the last at‑bat. It was a tight game. But we never feel like we're out any game. It's been our kicker all season as a team. We've come back before, and we're not afraid to do it again. Q. What do you think was leading to the pop‑ups when you wanted to get the ball down in the infield? STUDENT‑ATHLETE: I think the pitcher did a really good job of hitting his spots and mixing speeds. I think that had a lot to do with it. He had a pretty good changeup. But it goes back to our approach in batting practice and getting on top of the ball and hitting line drives. COACH POLLARD: I agree. When I say talk about our offensive approach, I don't take anything away from Crownover. I thought he pitched great, and he's a tremendous competitor. And he was able to run two‑seam away from us at times. But we need to do a better job of hitting with our top hand, and do it with whatever we need to do. Sometimes there is a willingness when you get in the batter's box to say, look, I'm going to force myself to get on top of the baseball and hit a hard groundball and not allow yourself to be underneath the baseball. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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