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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMay 25, 2014Danny HallDusty IsaacsA.J. MurrayThomas SmithGREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA Georgia Tech: 9 THE MODERATOR: We would like to welcome Georgia Tech Coach, Danny Hall, and student athletes A.J. Murray, Thomas Smith and Dusty Isaacs to the interview room. We'll take comments from Coach, first. COACH HALL: I would like to just first, start out thanking Greensboro for just‑‑ we won this thing here two years now and I think they've gone an awesome job of hosting. From the People here that, you know, run this stadium, run the pro team here to the grounds keeper to the laundry guy. We have two excellent hosts that kinda just take tremendous care of us. I want to first off just tip my hat to them, tip my hat to the ACC for running just a great tournament and making sure we have everything we need. Then tip my hat to these guys to my left for just an awesome run of coming in as a 9 seed, having to go into a play‑in game, the first time in the history of the ACC game we've had a play‑in game to get in the ACC Tournament and that game could have gone either way, but we fought our way in to beat Wake. Then we went on a great run. Duke beat us, but I think that can happen anyplace, anytime in this league. The 10 teams that made it here are 10 great teams. Getting into the Championship round is the hardest thing. Once you get there, if you play well you got a chance to win and they played their hearts out the whole week from pitching, to playing defense, to getting timely hits. We sit here today as the Champions so very proud of them. Q. Coach, how do you compare this to the one two years ago? Similar team? Similar come‑back? COACH HALL: Different in that the team two years ago just got on a big roll. We got into the ACC Tournament on the last day. I think we beat Miami at home and that put us in and then we got here and Jake Davies got hot and we rode him to the Championship. To me this is more of a team win of a lot of different guys playing well, contributing, believing in each other, you know, we play a lot of freshmen, we started our first series out here against Wake and lost two out of three at home, had our No. 1 and No. 2 pitcher go down for the year so Jason Howell did a great job of reshuffling and reorganizing our pitching staff from that point toward. We had some big series wins here and we came in thinking we could play with the good teams and I think we proved that. When we play well, we got a chance to beat anybody. Q. A.J. you were 3 of 4 with 3 RBIs and a run. Talk about how much it means to you to be able to contribute as much as you did in this Championship? A.J. MURRAY: Feels great. Earlier in the tournament my teammates were picking me up when I wasn't coming up in big spots and so it was great to contribute and get a win today. Q. Coach, what does it mean to come in here‑‑ you weren't expected to win, nobody would have taken a second look. You guys took care of business. What does that mean to you? COACH HALL: It's very satisfying and can't say enough about my guys here. They believed, they made it happen and, you know, as long as they believe, we have a chance to do well against just about anybody. Q. Did you feel you had to win this to get into the NCAAs? Or did you talk about it? COACH HALL: Oh, we talked about it. (Laughter.) No, I'll be honest, I felt like we had a good RPI, a good strength of schedule. I wish instead of under .500 in the regular season we were over .500 because I know that's important. I knew we had won some big series. The only time I mentioned it is prior to playing Clemson, at batting practice, and I felt like the guys felt they were in the tournament and I told them we were not in the tournament. And I told them if they beat Clemson, we could end up in the Championship game and that happened, thanks to Miami, and I said if you beat Clemson, you're going to put yourselves in the NCAA Tournament, so we were able to do that. Today we are in because we won the Championship. That's the way to do it, when you're the 9th seed, take all the doubt out of it and win the Tournament, you're in. Q. Thomas, what were you thinking when you were down? THOMAS SMITH: I think it was still positive. We still had plenty of time in the game to score some runs and it shows that our team put forth effort and made the come‑back and answer when we needed to. Q. Dusty, talk about the M.V.P. award and how much it means to you to put the team on your back and help carry them through the tournament. DUSTY ISAACS: It's obviously a great honor, but, I mean, I feel like‑‑ I shouldn't say I "lucked" into it, but I was put in some situations where it allowed me to be successful. I threw a couple of innings the first two games and then by default I kinda got a start yesterday. I'm just trying to go out there and make the best pitches I can, and I know if I can put up as many zeros for as long as I can. The offense is going to be there, we're always going to hit. So it's a great personal award but I'm proud of the team as a whole the way we fought and played pretty consistent for five days I guess now. Really, really proud of the guys, especially the young guys who have never been here before. I think anytime‑‑ like Coach said, anytime we believe and play together‑‑ we're going to make mistakes but as long as we play as hard as we can and we give 110%, I'll take our chances more times than not. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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