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NCAA MEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIES


June 21, 2016


Alex Cunningham

Gary Gilmore

G.K. Young


Omaha, Nebraska

TCU - 6, Coastal Carolina - 1

THE MODERATOR: Gary, would you give us an overview.

COACH GILMORE: Tip my hat to TCU. I thought, Howard, he was very good. He kept us off balance. I don't think we hit one or two really hard line drives off him all night long. And the only inning we got two hits off him in an inning was an inning that we had a huge base running blunder and kept us from scoring. Would have tied the ballgame up.

So my frustration is even though we won a game, we had to have a heroic pitching effort to get it done. We're a better team than what we've shown with base running and some other, especially defensively tonight. Everything we did good the other night we short-circuited tonight.

So hopefully we can come back Thursday and compete and show everybody how we actually got here.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes.

Q. A.C., just reflecting on your outing, how hard that fifth was to overcome with the way it started?
ALEX CUNNINGHAM: As far as my outing goes, I'm not pleased nor am I satisfied. Just gotta do better. Simple as that. But in the fifth, we had an error that kind of gave the momentum to TCU. Had a lot of pressure pitches. But just gotta do better. No excuses.

Q. What's the game plan when you're facing Baker, and did he live up to maybe what the game plan -- what the scouting report said it would be?
ALEX CUNNINGHAM: He's obviously a good hitter, maybe top three of their hitters. I made a mistake, and he capitalized on it. The second AB, I beat him with a fastball, and he hit a little soft fly ball in the right. But that's baseball. It happens. But, again, there's no excuses for the way I pitched.

Q. Building off what Coach said about the offense hasn't been there at this point, how confident you guys can bounce back and bring it on Thursday?
G.K. YOUNG: We're confident that we can do that. We showed time and time again that we can bounce it back and put it on some people. I'm not worried about this game. I believe the next game we'll come out and show we can play ball. We haven't shown our ability to hit in this ballpark, and I think it's coming.

Q. What did you see from Brian Howard tonight?
G.K. YOUNG: He located his fastball very good. And he kept us off balance, like Coach said, the whole game. And I was fortunate to get a couple of pitches I could put a barrel on. And he located. We kind of beat ourselves tonight. We swung at some pitches out of the zone.

Q. G.K., what have you maybe seen from this team when it has needed to respond this season?
G.K. YOUNG: We gotta make the plays that need to be made. And, I mean, base running mistakes that we've made, I made one of those the first night here. And we just gotta play smarter baseball. And we can come out and flip the switch and change the game in a heartbeat. We've done it time and time again.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for Coach.

Q. On that caught stealing in the inning there, was he supposed to get the run down to get Marks a chance to score? What was the play there?
COACH GILMORE: We were just trying -- we were running at third. I thought he could steal a bag. Just hadn't seen the replay. It was awful close. And just watching it full speed and just smart enough to realize that trying to just steal one run here and there probably going to be a struggle to compete with these guys.

So we were trying to -- I thought Mike had a good jump, and they just made a hair better play than we did.

Q. The left-hander out of the bullpen, 10 up, 10 down, I couldn't tell what was effective for him, but seemed like he kind of carved --
COACH GILMORE: Johnny -- I couldn't really tell. I think he just located his fastball, for the most part, and just did a real good job. I mean, our team, we've been able to respond over the course of the year when we've made mistakes, and we've been able to get a long ball or something to get back into the ballgame. This park plays very similar to the park we played in for two years.

It's unforgiving to try to -- you get down three runs, you feel like you're down 23 runs, to be very honest with you. It's very difficult to try to manage exactly how to play in this park having been in a completely different setting all year long.

So, I mean, at the end of the day, TCU played way better than we did, across the board. If we play like that again Thursday, I expect to be flying home Thursday night or Friday morning. We have to play better. We have to do a lot of things.

And in all honesty, you replay that game, maybe we still lose, whatever, but if we don't make the mistake at second base, we dump a ball into right, it's a 1-1 game. We've got a two-hopper to third -- in all honesty, Zach will be the first one to tell you, I should make that play a thousand times out of a thousand, it should have been a double-play ball. We throw it in the outfield and follow up with a walk, and it's just one of those days where unless somebody puts a swing on the ball, it's one of those frustrating days. And we haven't had many of those. And especially the last -- since Georgia Tech, we haven't had hardly any games like that.

So we'll see. It's been one of the most resilient groups I've ever coached, and we'll see how we come out and play on Thursday.

Q. Is there any chance of Beckwith coming back Thursday?
COACH GILMORE: No. No.

Q. What's your pitching situation, then? Who are you leaning towards?
COACH GILMORE: Just off the top of my head, I would assume we'll go with Bilous. He's the freshest arm. He's going to have to do the job. I can't -- I'm not going to jeopardize Beckwith. I don't know if he can pitch Friday.

But, I mean, we'll see. We already talked about it a minute ago. He'll let me know if we can win Thursday. We'll figure maybe it may be every man on board on Friday to try to get to him on Saturday in a do-or-die game. We'll see. As much as I want to win, I'm not going to put that young man's health in jeopardy.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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