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NCAA WOMEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIESMay 28, 2014Lonni AlamedaGlenn MooreTim WaltonMike WhiteOKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA THE MODERATOR: Just like to welcome everybody to the 2014 Women's College World Series. This is the second of today's two press conferences with the head coaches, from Florida Head Coach Tim Walton, from Baylor Head Coach Glenn Moore, from Oregon Head Coach Mike White and from Florida State, Head Coach Lonni Alameda. Coach Walton? COACH WALTON: First of all thanks for having us, thanks to the Oklahoma City All Sports Association, University of Oklahoma and the NCAA for putting on a great event in the ASA Hall of Fame Stadium. I love the renovations, the dugouts, and the upgrades and improvements for the student athletes. Thanks for having us here again and I look forward to great competition and great weather. COACH MOORE: I'll echo those same sentiments, we are looking forward to competing for a National Title with these guys and appreciate all the effort from everybody. COACH WHITE: It's great to be back. We had one year off but it's exciting to be back in Oklahoma City. I love the upgrade, dugouts look great. Excited to see what happens with even bigger upgrade, the support from Oklahoma City, ASA softball, USA softball and the administrators, that put this on, the NCAA as well. Exciting week, all eight great teams, it's not easy to get here, but we know that firsthand. COACH ALAMEDA: I guess I'm fourth in dittos. I will say I went to the University of Oklahoma, and I used to come here and do clinics for USASA softball and the venue is getting better every year. And it's so awesome for what we've created here for softball and for these young kids. They grow up to want to play at the highest level and this is it right here. So it's pretty outstanding, the work everyone has put in and we get excited about it. We're excited for the opportunity to be back after ten years of not being here. Q. Tim, can you talk about your season, the up's and downs, so good early against that tough schedule, struggled in conference and what clicked in the postseason? COACH WALTON: I think every team goes through the normal trends of a season. There are up's and down's and the teams that prevail in the end, are the teams that figure things out and bond and come together and play well. The Georgia loss was good for us, we actually got a couple days off and got humbled with our offense, so I think that helped us. We realized we had to make adjustments and do things different offensively and I think that was good. I commend our players and our strength coach and staff for recognizing some deficiencies in our mentality and making the improvements and doing the things we needed to do to get back here and compete for a championship. Q. Tim, I'm curious, who or what has shaped your philosophy of hitting and what matters to you when you analyze it? COACH WALTON: Well, I think a little bit of everybody shapes you. We watch the hitters from all the good teams we play, all our opponents. The teams that do things that you get intrigued by. I think the foundation that's laid is what you've seen, what you're accustomed to, what you're used to and all the players that have played under me that I've coached. I've taken a little bit from them. I think the thing that is most important to me is just allowing hitters to be themselves and trying to figure out a way to improve that; improve what they do. I don't have a philosophy, and I think for reasons that‑‑ I wasn't a great hitter so I don't feel like I have all the answers to hitting. I feel like I try to instill a good work ethic, a proper approach to hit with my hitters, and, you know, at the end of the day, whether they're a power hitter, a line drive hitter, a contact hitter we try to make them feel confident and be better at what they do. I think that's my approach more than anything. Q. Time was in this tournament, there would be three, four, five teams from the Pac 12 here, only one this year. I guess do you feel any extra added responsibility coming from a power conference? And talk about how softball isn't a west coast game anymore, you have all these other teams here. COACH WHITE: First off, I'm glad to be the one! I thought UCLA, Arizona State, Arizona, all had great teams this year, but that tells you about the parity of the game right now. It's great for the game. Rising tied lifts all boats so the better everyone gets the better this game gets and the more media, again, just rolls. We love that fact! Is there any extra pressure on us? I don't think so. The game doesn't know how many Pac 12 teams are here, they expect us to play well and we're going to do the best we can and if we're the last one here, great, if not, there's going to be a worthy champion walking out at the end. I'm very excited for softball overall. Q. Tim, what have you seen from Whitney Canyon and what can it mean for a team to bring that experience? COACH WALTON: I think she made her first college start against the Florida Gators, if I'm not mistaken and I think we beat her and she came back on Sunday and beat us and we had a good offense back then. I think I was a year older than Whitney when she was in high school, but I'm not going to use that one! (Laughter.) She's good and always been good. When I recruited her and watched her play in the Fort Worth area, she was a competitor. She could hit, pitch, play any position and now you've taken her to where she is that much better and she is a good embassador not only for Baylor, but all of college softball going through her issues with her knees and stuff. She is going to be tough. We have watched a lot of film on her already and she is going to be tough to crack. Q. Lonni, what's the biggest obstacle you face in playing Oregon? COACH ALAMEDA: I think Oregon presents us with a very well rounded team. They've got speed and power hitting and great pitching in the circle and definitely a lot of good experience coming from their conference. You know, throughout the season we gotta go out and play our style of softball, play catch. They definitely put the pressure on defense and throw the ball around a little bit and they take advantage of that, so you can't give them too much but we're excited to play a storied program and a program that's been very good in the past couple of years. Q. Kentucky's pitcher is wearing a mask. There has been an uptick across the nation at all levels to protect pitchers. What are your thoughts on protecting your pitcher and masks and the increase in the safety concerns? COACH ALAMEDA: I'll take that. I get a lot of questions, club ball coaches asking about masks. I feel whatever is comfortable for the student athlete to compete you gotta let them compete, so if they want to wear a mask that's fine and if they're at the level that the coach wants to recruit them the mask isn't going to take them out of that opportunity. So it's definitely something that doesn't take away from their athleticism. COACH WHITE: I would feel pretty bad if I told some kid to not wear a mask and they got hit in the face. If they're comfortable with it that's fine, they have a choice to wear a mask or not wear a mask, same thing with the fielders. Shouldn't make a difference with how they field, but my first thing with a pitcher is throw it where they can't hit it. COACH MOORE: In 2011 we had Clare Hosack against Georgia foul a ball off into her face, broke her occipital bone in four places, and up to that point in time I was old‑fashioned and didn't like masks and the next year every one of our kids had them on their helmets. It was an ugly sight, and it's their choice, for me. Q. How do you coach somebody who's been around as long as Whitney? Do you have to take a different approach with her having so much experience and do you appoint her the tour guide while you're here? COACH MOORE: She is the coach on the field. I said last week she knows as much about pitching as anybody on our staff. She is not only a great pitcher but a student of the game. The two years she was sitting in the dugout rehabbing, she was studying other pitchers and became a great student of the game. Even this year, her 6th year, when she is in the dugout in‑between going out to pitch she watches other pitchers and gives us valuable feedback. She loves the position and you let her go. Take her advice, give her bits of information to help her succeed but she knows what she's doing so you don't coach her a whole lot. Q. Mike, could you talk about the challenge of facing Lacey Waldrop and a hitter like Maddie O'Brien? COACH WHITE: Not an easy one to answer because obviously they're both great players. Waldrop we know, keeps the ball down so the secret is to get the ball up, look out for the off‑speed and the change‑up. It's a three‑pronged sword, really, so we got to make sure we get balls in the strike zone just like any other pitcher. We've seen their pitching, all 80 teams have seen great pitching all year. It's a matter of coming out with a good game plan and sticking to it and making sure you can stick to it. There is no secret to that at all. With O'Brien, she is a good hitter and she is going to get her shots and we need to vary it up on her, not let her get situated where she knows what's coming and mix it up a little bit and not put people on in front of her, so we'll wait and see how we go. Q. Coach Moore, looks like they have four hitters with double figure homers, Lauren Haeger has 20. Talk about trying to pitch to this one‑‑ COACH MOORE: You hit three of them and hope you get lucky on the fourth. Typical Tim Walton lineup and our work is cutout for us. We're hoping that our road to Oklahoma City prepares us for those type of hitters. We saw some great ones at Georgia and we tried to put together a strong schedule to prepare Whitney for this type of offense, but they're going to score runs and we're going to have to back it up as well. Q. Coach, you have more power than you had three years ago when you were here. Does that ability to win games in a couple of different fashions, with pitching or with the long ball, for instance, does that age you in a tournament like that? COACH MOORE: I think it has this year, it's given us the ability to get four bases out of a swing instead of one in the still. It's no secret I like the short game, I like speed but that part of the game there is a place for it and there needs to be a better balance than what we have had previous, at least the last trip here and fortunately we won a couple of games by the long ball, but it took us 13 inches to do it. We have improved in that area, and we have more confidence offensively and less stolen bases. It's a direction that we wanted to go in as a program. Probably would still like a little more of a balance than we have but we're happy with what we have done this year. Q. Glenn, Whitney said you can talk about it but you can't prepare them for the environment and the atmosphere. How do you prepare your younger players that haven't been here for this big stage? COACH MOORE: As far as us, we allow the ones that have been here to do a lot of that. Fortunately this is my first time to have players that are currently on the team that did have that experience and I think that's the way we've utilized their abilities and their experience, to share with the team. I can go back to playing at Georgia. That was a tough environment, nothing like they will have here but it was a tough environment, tough place to play and I think you do your best to put 'em in those environments and try to get them focused. They're going to have to get through a few inches before they settle in and it just becomes another game after that. Q. Lonni, talk about Tiffany Brown. I think she was the third player from a Tallahassee high school to sign with Florida State, what has her speed done for you this year? COACH ALAMEDA: Tiffany is great, nice kid to have on the program, being injured last season and coming back and having speed as one of your threats and having the knee injury, she has had to work hard, and kudos to the people in the weight room and the training that has gotten her back to this point. But we have to rely on her leadership and she is one of those kids. She plays passionately and our infield plays tight and we're going to look to those kids to get us through that and we're fortunate that she has a fifth year under her belt and a little more maturity for us. Q. Tim, Hannah Rogers, can you talk about the leadership from the circle? COACH WALTON: She has been consistent, a pitcher for us that we know what we're going to get a lot. She has brought she has‑‑ I think her and Whitney are tied or one win separating the two of them. She is somebody we're proud of, just the nature in her work ethic, her personality. She is low maintenance, comes to work every day. She doesn't complain, she is on track to graduate. She just does things. She is No. 1 in all of our speed agility and 6 a.m. sprints and conditioning and all that stuff. She pushed herself and not only changed the way she pitches, but changed her mentality and everything about her in her four‑year career to get her to this point. She got us here this season. She has battled through some stuff and pitched lights out this last weekend in a super regional against a really good offensive team. Q. How has her mentality changed? COACH WALTON: She had belief systems that she was a curveball pitcher or rise ball pitcher or she was this and she has humbled herself in some ways, where she has had bad games and given up hits where she thought her stuff was better than it was. She has changed her mentality in understanding how to trust her stuff and where she is pitching and not try to make perfect pitches. She sometimes pitches to contact, sometimes to miss. She uses her defense very well. Her defensive mentality has evolved immensely. She is like what Stacy Nelson was before her, a shortstop in the circle, she wants the ball, she wants to go get the ball and she wants to try to get outs. That helps us in a lot of ways. Q. Lonni, how do you prepare a young pitcher like Burroughs, a lot of up side? How do you prepare her psychologically to step up on this stage? COACH ALAMEDA: Jessica obviously is going to get a great opportunity this week and get some innings out there. You just hope you've taught them‑‑ she sits next to me when Lacey is there and all of our players are taught to be leaders, so Lacey works well with Jessica, in the bullpen and talking situations and analyzing video and scouting and putting things to the test. You can't replace experience and you can't replace what they're going to get right now and kinda like Glenn said, too, it's going to take a couple of innings for all of us kids to get in, shake off the "wow I'm in this stadium", everything I've he dreamed of since playing club ball, but we have to trust our preparation that everything we've talked about and set out for is going to be able to settle down and do the one pitch mentality. Q. One of the coaches earlier was talking about how in softball players tend to have a personality and expression you don't see in any other sports. Does anyone see that in their team and if so do you think it's good for the game? COACH WALTON: I believe that the sport of softball and the close proximity to the fans and the dugouts and the nature of the game itself, positive emotion is very contagious. I love it. It's a lot of the things that famous softball players have done here on this stage in the past will be future seen on other fields. Positive emotion and positive things happening out there, I think it's great for the game. It's great to relate. This is a kid's game and let the kids be the kids and have fun and do things especially when it's positive. COACH MOORE: I like to see them have fun. Big part of my childhood was growing up playing this sport, my family, my brothers played this sport and my dad was a big pitcher and didn't want that taken away from me. I think sometimes I'm concerned about stepping over the line with dressing up in dugouts and acting crazy sometimes, but the cheering, all that, letting them have fun, I think that would be a shame to take that away from them. COACH WHITE: We have no problem with our players expressing themselves and even our pet snake has his own Facebook page so it's all good for me (Laughter.) But in all seriousness, It's the way they stay relaxed it's the way they feel good to play and if it helps us win I'm all for it. They know when they're stepping over the line, like you said, so it's great to see them express themselves and that's the main thing. Q. Lonni, Maddie O'Brien has a little bit of a Mickey Mantle obsession. How does a 20 year old girl from Florida become so infatuated with a guy who played in the 60s and since you're in his home state, is she pushing for a team dinner at Mickey Mantle steak house? COACH ALAMEDA: They have taken pictures of statues and stuff, she comes from a baseball background, her brother, her dad, she watches BP with the Tampa Bay rays and will stay to the end of the game no matter the score. She just truly enjoys the game and it comes from family and background and being around it. I think all of us really enjoy the kids that really enjoy watching baseball too, because there is a lot we can learn from both and she really is a student of the game. But I attest that to her family and her father. Q. Tim and Lonni, you're both OU grads. Could you talk about how that program helped you get to where you are today. COACH WALTON: Well, you know, for me personally, Lonni is a couple of classes ahead of me, but for me personally‑‑ COACH ALAMEDA: (Away from mic.) COACH WALTON: For me personally, the experience that I had at the University of Oklahoma, both of us are California natives and just coming out here and being in a big‑time program, big‑time atmosphere away from home, it's prepared me for a lot of things. The education, just the sports mentality. Being in California and doing things‑‑ there is a lot of teams, a lot of different professional teams, so coming out here and being part of something like that shaped my ideals, gave me the drive and the will and the want to actually coach at a school that has football and football is the bread winner and the horse behind it. It's fun having that kind of atmosphere and to me it all started when I stepped on campus at Norman. COACH ALAMEDA: I think on top of that, the same things, it's an amazing school but a lot of us get the opportunity to be part of amazing traditions. The connections, the people. I still keep in touch with a lot of Oklahoma administrators, secretaries, you get e‑mails and not just because we're here now but in the past years and I think that there is a lot of baseball players that have gone on and played and they're truly fans of the game. That's been neat to keep those connections and share, and a lot of them come out to camp and help grow the game and the knowledge so that's helped me to where I'm at right now. Q. Glenn and Tim, one of the coaches in the earlier session said she thinks the days of one pitcher coming here and being able to win this thing are probably over. Thoughts on that point? Is that the direction this sport is going? COACH MOORE: I don't think the days are over. It is certainly tough for a six‑year kid to have enough left with what she has given to the sport. I think we have a pretty solid staff. We've just not dipped into it. I know certainly that Tim does and he has. In that regard I think his staff is a little more prepared than we are, but it's tough for one, but I'm certain that one could still do it. I think like Mike says, the parity right now is very good across the country and, you know, fortunately we're developing pitchers faster and while we don't have that Cat Osterman or big‑time arm right now, we'll have them and see them again, personally. COACH WALTON: I would never say never. I saw Megan Langenfield come out and pitch and hit and I saw her do it here in gold softball and on the national stage. I think you can get somebody hot enough they can do anything, I would never say never. I know with offense and we have stretched the lineups to what used to be 3 and 4 deep to six, seven, eight, nine players deep so it's tough to get through, or four times through a lineup, but I don't think never. I just think it's more difficult than it used to be for sure. Q. Mike, how do the top three batters in your order shape what you do offensively? COACH WHITE: Obviously, we go as they go. They are table setters, we feel pretty confident that we can get them on or one of them on every inning and that brings up our 4 hitter pretty much every first inning, but we've done it so far this year, touch wood. They're varied on what they can do, it's tough to defend them, because you can't say sit on the bunt or sit on the slap, you cant play them too shallow or they're going to hit it over your head. It's a good problem to have right now, I remember watching Arizona and seeing all the speed they have and if I had an opportunity I would love to build a team around some speed, and I'm fortunate enough to have three good ones at the top of the order that are able to start us off and hope they can continue to do that. Q. Mike, are you a one‑pitcher guy? If you have your way would you want that one pitcher who you're going to roll out there every time in every big game? COACH WHITE: I'm a guy that likes options to tell you the truth. I think if I can get out there and get a good lift and an up‑ball pitcher and a down‑ball pitcher, whoever is hot, goes, give me options. There is no reason why we couldn't have a starter, middle relief and closer, we haven't got to that yet but there is room for that. If you're going to carry three or four pitchers on the staff you have to do it that way, otherwise you're not going to keep 'em happy. You get into a conference where we play three games, you start the same one three games, the other kids aren't going to be happy. So you have to develop strategies to make that happen. I totally agree from what we see in the future, there are very good pitchers out there coming down the pipeline and we could see a Monica Abbott or Cat Osterman, somebody like that. There is some good, young talent out there. Q. When you were playing at home were you satisfied with the turnout in super regionals? And have any of you ever asked ESPN not to show the empty portions in your stadium? COACH WHITE: I asked them not to show our port‑a‑potties and our bullpen, we need a new stadium! Our stadium was completely full, we couldn't get anymore in there, we had 1900 in there and it holds 1500. We sold out on Wednesday, couldn't get anymore people in. We're proud of the way we have promoted the program through our administration, sports marketing and Pac 12 networks, they have done a great job of that as well. The game is in a great state if you ask me. Right now on the west coast we need better facilities to promote the game and get people to come out and watch the game in the numbers that could be there. COACH WALTON: I think Lonni and I are both in the same situation. We go through a season where we don't charge admission, the games are free so to ask our fans to spend money for the postseason, regional and super regional, we had phenomenal turn out, we opened up the outfield, we had 100 or so in the outfield. Our numbers were solid, we were anywhere from 1900 to 2100 a game, very solid, we only see 1200 people in seats. We have a berm area on both sides. I think of all the teams that are playing, they're all looking in some way shape or form to expand in the near future to‑‑ for the demand of the fans and the game. It's definitely everywhere I go, there is always improvements in every one of the teams in our leagues. I was pleased and thankful for the number of people that came out, especially given our states of temperatures that we had this last weekend. It was record highs. COACH MOORE: We weren't at home, we were in Athens and I believe they were sold out every day and there was a lot of barking. We had a great crowd and they did a great job. And I don't think there were any places for ESPN to shoot that there weren't dog fans barking at us. COACH ALAMEDA: We had an outstanding group out there, too, and coming out of the ACC and now representing the ACC and being one of the teams to start really building that conference and get more exposure for that conference it was outstanding to see what we had there and ESPN was great with us, they had so many cameras at different angles and easy to work with and great for our student athletes and great for our game and our environment. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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