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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMay 24, 2014Robert HuberCris PerezChris PollardGREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA Miami: 6 THE MODERATOR: Joining us on the dais is Duke, Head Coach, Chris Pollard and it is student athletes Robert Huber and Cris Perez. We will start with an opening statement from Coach. COACH POLLARD: First off, give credit to Miami for continuing to fight till the very end. They've got a very good club. They certainly have a team capable of going to the World Series. I'm certainly proud of our team, proud of our fight. I'm not disappointed in them, I'm disappointed for them. These guys fought like crazy, both of these guys to my left, Robert Huber, doing it all year and did it again today. We just came up a run short. Q. Talk about the willingness to fight in your team when their backs were up against the wall that you kept fighting and clawing back into the game? COACH POLLARD: It's sign of the great senior leadership that we have. One of our captains is sitting beside me, along with Betts and Rosenfeld and Ryan Deitrich. They answered the call every time their backs have been up against the wall all year, they did it on Thursday. I thought we did it again today. Again, I don't have any issues with our effort or our fight. I thought we fought to the very last pitch and, again, I'm really proud of them. Q. Cris, you and Bryan were high school teammates? CRIS PEREZ: I caught him pretty much every Tuesday last year in high school. He was our‑‑ Q. What was that like going up against him? CRIS PEREZ: Well, I've over the season, you know, I've had some communication with him. I went out to eat with him when he was in Durham a couple of weeks ago and kept it in mind that it could be a possibility, especially if he was a closer that I would come up in a situation where the game could be on the line. Also with my role on this team and how I've been coming off the bench and previous occasions against Notre Dame and Virginia Tech I've come up in pressure situations at the end of the game. Similar way today. He happened to be in the game when I got the call. Got a good pitch and put a good play on it. Q. Fouled two in a row. CRIS PEREZ: Yeah, he came at me with a lot of foul balls, got a pitch I could drive and came out on top. Q. (No microphone.) CRIS PEREZ: Yeah, I caught him for a couple years. He came out of the pen as a junior and was our ace as a senior. You know, when I got the opportunity to play in high school‑‑ we have a lot of guys in the ACC so it's interesting when we get to play each other, especially Miami, I'm from Miami. It's a neat experience and got the better hand this time, fortunately. Q. Robert, can you address, you guys haven't been in the tournament in a while and you guys have the chance to go the championship game for the first time in school history, your feelings? ROBERT HUBER: Like Coach said earlier, I felt like our team had a lot of motivation behind this game, to do something that hadn't been done in a long time. We felt we had a really good chance coming into this game, with Swart on the mounds and how we've been hitting lately. It came down to one swing of the at‑bat that changed the pace of the game. Give it to Miami on that. But I did feel like we played well throughout the entire game. Just happened that Miami came out on top. Q. Were you planning to hold Istler for tomorrow? Was that the original plan without the extra innings today? COACH POLLARD: The plan was to start Istler tomorrow, if it played out that way. We knew it was a "must win" so we were ready to throw him if we had to. But the match‑ups we got, it wasn't that we skipped over him, before we got to Huber, it was just the way it set up. It was the right match‑up and when hen distribution came in, we felt like left hander was the right match‑up in the 8th and once we got to where Lopez was, we felt like it was right to go to a right hander, and it was an easy decision to go to Robert in that situation because he's been doing that all year. Q. Coach, talk about talking to the team after the game, coming up one game short. COACH POLLARD: I love 'em and I'm proud of them and they got nothing to hang their heads about. Q. Coach, can you talk about the growth that you've had with this program so early in your career here at Duke? COACH POLLARD: Yeah. You know, I guess if I'm honest with you, this group of guys really expected this. I don't know how many people outside of our team expected us to do this, but we've talked about this and pointed towards it and felt like to be where we were was a realistic step. Fortunately I have a group of veterans who were tough enough to take that step. And what I mean by that is when you've struggled for a long time sometimes the hard part is getting over the hump. These guys were tough enough to fight to get over the hump and they battled through adversity early, they had injuries, kept fighting and, again, I couldn't be more proud of our seniors. Q. Robert, to have the game go like it did today when you come back in the 9th, does that make it almost better or worse than if you lost differently? ROBERT HUBER: I'm not sure if it makes it better or worse. When it came down to it, it was my job to basically keep the game where it was after Cris tied it up in the 9th inning. As a closer, your job is to close out the game but at that point, and it's happened a couple of times this year, it was to hold the game where it was. You know, I was having success with the fastball and I didn't need to go away from that. It was good to keep us in there and that was my job. Q. Thoughts about Monday? COACH POLLARD: You know, I think that obviously we've been talked about being on the "bubble" for a while now. I think we came down here and played tough. I think we have showed that we can play with anybody in the country. The decision is out of our hands. I do know this. If we do get in, we're a team that nobody wants to play, because we pitch, we play defense, we play tough, we play for the last out. So if we do get in, we're going to be tough in a regional, that's for sure. We'll keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best and we'll be ready to play when we're selected. Q. (No microphone.) COACH POLLARD: I hope so! I know that, you know, a lot of folks were tuning in and watching, and, again, I think what they saw is a team that's got a deep pitching staff and a lot of arms, and I know that's important in regional play and it's an important selection criteria. I think you look at how we played over the second half of the season once we got healthy. We had a strong resume over the second half of the season. THE MODERATOR: Thank you all very much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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