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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMay 28, 2017Mike MartinDrew MendozaDrew ParrishJackson LueckLouisville, Kentucky MIKE MARTIN: I guess I'll open it up and just say, I don't know when I've ever been more proud of a group of young men. Obviously it was a well-run tournament. I told the committee, I felt sorry for them, because there it was the ninth inning and there came the rain. They had to be saying, you've got to be kidding me. But we lucked out and it passed over. It was a good week of baseball for us. A couple of errors today were unusual for the person that made them. But might say he made up for it. Q. When you look at where you were at that point, down 3-1, you knew that you had enough time, just to string some hits together. What was your thought about your offense at that point? MIKE MARTIN: Well, Baum was very impressive and Hyatt was certainly an impressive pitcher. You just -- you just have to continue to be patient, and I thought that our patience and grinding out at-bats was very impressive. It's just a most unpredictable sport, because so much can happen. If somebody said, what was the key to the inning, I would have to say, well, it was a tie: Dylan Busby getting hit to give us first and second, and one of the wild pitches. Sure, Drew hit a big home run. Hit two of them. But it was just an inning that we took advantage of every opportunity. These young men certainly deserve -- you've got two freshmen and a sophomore up here, also. Q. When you have the play with the error early in the game, how important was it to get back at the plate? DREW MENDOZA: As soon as I came off the field, Quincy and Dylan Busby are in my ear telling me to relax, it's early; you're a freshman, you are going to come back, you're going to have a big at-bat, and they were right, and I was able to capitalize on it. Just the leadership from the older guys was really important. Q. Did that mean something to you, that you were able to hear that and obviously get your spirits back up quickly? DREW MENDOZA: Yeah, absolutely. I've known that my team has confidence in me but my self confidence has lacked a bit lately. It's been a long week, ten days in Louisville but just knowing those older guys are on my back and knowing they are with me the whole time, it's really important. Q. Take me through the inning where bases loaded, nobody out? DREW PARRISH: Well, I walked the first guy and I know how to get ahead and stay ahead with the next guy. I was just hitting with my curveball, getting ahead in the counts, and putting pressure on them. Making them hit the ball, and let my defense behind me do the work. Just so happened they swung through three curveballs, so it was a pretty good moment. Q. For either of you, how big a point in the game was it -- DREW MENDOZA: Just for that was phenomenal. Q. Speaking of running out of gas, North Carolina coming in, I think they had scored 34 runs in the tournament, and that second inning, they seemed to be kind of rolling there. I guess when you got that inning, when you got the strikeouts, did you feel like that was a team that had finally kind of hit the wall offensively and that might give you a chance? DREW PARRISH: I definitely didn't think they hit the wall, because they are such a great offense. I knew they probably -- our momentum shifted towards us again, so I knew that was going to help us out. But I knew I couldn't just throw soft cookies in there because they would capitalize. They are a good team. Q. You spent ten days here in Louisville. What did you do while you were here for that amount of time, and you get to go home and sleep in your own bed tonight. How is that going to feel for you guys? JACKSON LUECK: We watched a lot of rain fall down, that was for sure. (Laughter) I mean, any time we're not playing, we're always hanging out together. Our hotel was kind of like next to the downtown area. So we got to go out and see at least nice restaurants and hang out. And definitely sleeping in my own bed tonight is going to be really nice. DREW MENDOZA: I mean, personally it took me two hours to pack up. For ten days, my stuff was everywhere. JACKSON LUECK: Plus our hotel was haunted, too. DREW MENDOZA: That, too. Q. Which hotel? DREW PARRISH: The Seelbach. DREW MENDOZA: Yeah, the Lady in Blue actually helped me pack (laughter). Q. With the pitches that you got in both of those innings, what were you looking for, and were you kind of surprised to get those same kind of pitches in back-to-back innings? DREW MENDOZA: I know that they have film on me. I faced them in my first series of the year. I've had trouble laying off low pitches. I know they were going to come at me with changeups. I didn't know when. I was looking for it at some times and some times I just reacted but I was lucky they stayed up enough that I could get a good barrel on it. So yeah, I was fortunate to do that. Q. Looking forward to -- JACKSON LUECK: Yeah, I like Tallahassee. Q. When you come into a tournament like this, especially the new format, how do you -- not adjust, but what was the main thing you had to do to really get through this field? JACKSON LUECK: It's pretty much win or go home. If we lost one game, depending on how Louisville did, but pretty much for us, we had the mind-set, we had to win or go home. So we just went out there and played our hardest, every inning, every pitched and tried to win every game. Q. After losing in the final, how much redemption do you feel like you all gained with this? JACKSON LUECK: Yeah, that day was terrible. I think we were there for about five or six hours. It was like a five-hour delay, and come out here and win it all, it's a huge, huge thing for us. It's definitely better than losing, that's for sure. MIKE MARTIN: Every one of those guys made over a 3.0 -- that's two freshmen. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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