Postgame Quotes
June 4, 2005
Mississippi State coach Ron Polk
“(Cesar) Carrillo feels like he’s going to be a pretty good first-round draft pick, and I think he’s as good as advertised. We had some opportunities. Danny Figueroa was the key today. He got on base five times – infield hit because of his speed, two walks, hit batter and home run. If you take Danny and Carrillo out of the picture, I think we win the ballgame. Cesar struck out nine, so that’s pretty much one per inning. His numbers were gaudy coming in, and we knew we had to work and make all the plays. Carrillo was too tough tonight and we weren’t able to put anything up early, and that’s the key. We had to get to their bullpen, but (Chris) Perez looks like he has a pretty good arm. I thought Todd Doolittle pitched well against a good lineup.
“We can get back into this thing. We just have to get by Florida Atlantic tomorrow. We all want to play Miami again, and we may have to play them twice. I can’t believe that their starting pitching will be even better than it was tonight, and if that happens, we’ll go home. Hopefully we can score runs. We’re not ready to go home yet.”
P Todd Doolittle
“(Danny Figueroa) took some pitches and got some walks out of me. I thought I threw well enough early in the game. That’s a good lineup. I ran out of gas pretty early and I was fighting the best I could. They’re good. Figueroa and Cesar, they did well. They beat us. We couldn’t get the key hits. I made a few mistakes and gave up a few hits and they scored a few runs. The bullpen didn’t shut it down like they should have. But that happens.”
MIAMI
Head Coach Jim Morris:
“It was a great college baseball game for both sides. It was great for the fans to watch. Mississippi State has an outstanding team. We knew we were going to have a tough time when we found out that we were going to play these guys. They’re tough on the road. You can’t intimidate them with a crowd because they are used to playing in front of big crowds. It’s just a great effort from their team and from our team. Another outstanding effort from Cesar [Carrillo] and Danny [Figueroa] is on base every night. (Danny Figueroa) Hit the big home run and Jon Jay had a big hit. It was a little scary there until Danny hit the home run. We left a lot of guys on base but their pitcher threw outstanding and they were great on defense. It was just an outstanding game to watch and be involved in.”
Centerfielder Danny Figueroa:
About stealing the bags: “I was just getting the timing down most of the time it was just getting quick to the plate. I felt like I got great jumps off. The pitcher came out throwing hard, we expected that. He was a bulldog out there but we came out with the win.”
On his homerun:
“I was looking, two men out, one on first all I could do was put the ball in play and get an insurance run. With Chris Perez out there and a one-run lead, I knew that he would get the job done. It was a fastball.”
Pitcher Cesar Carrillo
“Basically I was just trying to get out there and set a tone for our team.”
On coming out:
“I didn’t really run out of gas. You have to give Mississippi State some credit. I mean they could have easily folded but they came out big in the eighth inning.”
