Post Game Quotes
May 22, 2008
MIAMI HEAD COACH Jim Morris
Opening Statement…
“I don’t even know how to talk about that game. Wow, what a crazy game. You score that many runs and you expect to win but then we let them back into the game. Just a crazy game, we’re very fortunate to win that game. Our hitters did a great job of battling back, every single time they battled and battled. Of course, we had some huge home runs with DiNatale’s (Dave) being the biggest. Then in the ninth inning, Carlos (Gutierrez) pitched well, but we have to pitch better than we pitched. We can’t give up that many runs. We can pitch better, and there’s no question that we have pitched better all year. But the bottom line is we won, and maybe it’s termed as an ugly win but, it’s better than an ugly loss.”
On the team’s pitching…
“Our pitching’s been pretty good all year overall but we’ve got to pitch better. You win different ways, we’ve got an outstanding record. The fact is we pitch sometimes, we play good defense sometimes and today was one of those days in which we took up for our pitchers and our hitters did a great job of battling back and winning the game.”
Carlos Gutierrez, RS-JR, RHP
On being given the chance to come back in the ninth…
“It was fun to come back in the ninth. I knew I was going to be given the chance. I knew I kind of blew the game there in the bottom of the eighth when they scored a few runs. But I knew with the way the game was going the hitters were going to fight back there. They battled back for me and they gave me another chance to go out there and get the win. I’m going to be buying a lot of dinners tonight.”
Yonder Alonso, JR, 1B
On how he is seeing the ball right now…
“I’m just trying to get good at-bats. That’s just my game plan right now. I don’t know about seeing the ball well because I struck out twice. I had two bad at-bats but I was able to at least help the team win and it was just a team effort. These tournaments, you just want to win as a team and not really care about what you do.”
GEORGIA TECH HEAD COACH DANNY HALL
On the ballgame…
“That was a tough ballgame to lose. I’m proud of our guys, the way they battled back all night. It looked like the game was set up perfectly with (Brad) Rulon coming in, but they are a very good hitting ball club and the margin for error is very slim. We just made too many mistakes to their hitters and they just made us pay every time we made a mistake by hitting the ball out of the ballpark. I thought we walked too many guys but again, give those guys a lot of credit. They proved they are a great team and a great hitting team in particular.”
On the option of walking Dave DiNatale in the ninth…
“We considered it, but you didn’t want to walk the winning run in. I felt like we were going to pitch him tough, and we tried to do that. We just didn’t do that and we didn’t make the pitches we needed to make on him.”
On the Miami lineup…
“Every guy on their lineup has the ability to hit the ball out of the ballpark, and they proved that tonight. They had some big hits when they needed them. (Yonder) Alonso hurt us bad early and (David) DiNatale kinda shocked us, to be honest, in hitting the two home runs. We really just made mistakes on both the pitches he hit. To give him credit, he hit them both out of the park.”
GEORGIA TECH’S JASON HANIGER (Jr. – C)
On how Georgia Tech hit the ball…
“I think we did a good job of getting ahead in the count and not swinging at bad pitches for the most part. We had guys like Jeff (Ussery) coming off the bench, getting hits and for Luke (Murton) to wear one like that and guys competing. We knew we had to have a different mindset coming out against the No. 1 team in the nation, and we knew that we needed to come out and play our best baseball. We went out there and gave it our all, and unfortunately we came out on the losing end.”
GEORGIA TECH’S JEFF ROWLAND (Fr. – OF )
On the wild pitch…
“I was rounding third and I really just wanted to get in a good position to score. The ball just kicked away the right distance, and I was just trying to get in there to get us ahead.”
