Texas Tech University Athletics
Postgame Quotes
March 26, 2010 | Baseball
March 26, 2010
Recap | Final Stats | Notes
Head Coach Dan Spencer
On the opening-series win over Texas tonight:
"First game of the series against anybody is huge. Beating Texas is great, obviously. Thing about them is they wouldn't go away. They kept hanging around and we had to get a couple of big outs throughout the game. You can't say enough about them. Our guys had a good approach at the plate. They did a good job with a real good right-hander. John Neely was tremendous. That's a tough environment to pitch in with the wind blowing like it was. Once he threw up and got that out of his system, he was pretty good for five (innings)."
On the early 5-0 lead after two innings:
"That was huge. We got the momentum over here and got the crowd going. We got them on their heels a little bit and forced them to go to plan B. He (Taylor Jungmann) did and he settled in pretty good. He ran himself out of pitches and we got him back in trouble and we were able to cash in."
On the decision to go with the offensive lineup to play in the wind:
"When you got (Taylor) Jungmann going at you, you have to be offensive. Thing is, people don't understand how much work Scotty (LeJeune) has done to get where he's at. He went out yesterday and took balls. He went out before batting practice and took more balls, took more balls in batting practice. He's such a good athlete that having him on the field obviously frees up that designated hitter spot for Whitey (Kevin Whitehead) too if the pitcher is right-handed. Just him doing that and having enough courage to do it after he's had some bad things happen to him out there, that takes a lot of character and guts to do that."
On Texas pitcher Taylor Jungmann's performance tonight:
"I would guess that he was off a little bit and our kids just did a real good job with him. They stayed off of some pitches. When the park's playing like it is tonight, every time you walk a guy, on either side, it just makes you cringe because bad things can happen. That's how it is and that's how the game is played. I thought we hit some balls hard and I thought we played great defense for the most part and I thought we pitched well."
On the current four-game winning streak:
"I feel really glad that Bobby Doran is available to go tomorrow and that we don't have to look at (Taylor) Jungmann anymore but I know they have plenty more arms in the cabinet. We need to come out tomorrow and really show up. Try and knock them back on their heels because the thing about Texas is they are very talented and they really pitch but they don't back off. They keep coming and coming and they kept coming tonight. They extended Chad (Bettis) a little bit. You can't say enough about the way they approached it. They could have rolled over at 12-2 or 8-1 but they didn't. Nor did I expect them to. But we have our work cut out."
On the decision to leave Chad Bettis in the game with a six-run lead:
"Once he was in the game, we were going to leave him. In our yard the way the wind blows, the way I look at it, if you are up six, you are really up three. If you are up eight, you are really up four. If you're up 10, you're really up five. That's the way I do it here. I did not think by any means a six-run lead was an insurmountable deficit for Texas or anybody. We saw Corpus Christi drop a six on us in the seventh or eighth on Wednesday. When the ballpark is playing hot, you've got to fire your gun and you don't want to fire your gun too late. There's trouble already for Chad (Bettis) so we got him in there, got about two innings so that means he's got about six left in him for the weekend."
On the early lead helping extend John Neely's pitching today:
"It really helped us because with Chad (Bettis) in the bullpen and Jay (Johnson), we feel pretty good about our two-headed monster. With (John) Neely going five, it really shortened the game. Getting him through a fifth (inning) and he builds on this, he can go five or six and turn into a guy we can really depend on, which he has. It just helps us. Getting the five out of him keeps someone else from coming out of the bullpen early that is tired. We used a lot of guys on Tuesday and Wednesday and we had some guys like (Colt) Farrar, (Ben) Flora and even (Brett) Bruening, who needed another day. We're a little more locked and loaded with those guys now."
Pitcher John Neely
On his pitching performance today:
"I came out with the jitters a little bit. I tried to throw strikes as much as I could with the wind blowing out. I just kept the ball down and let my defense work."
On the pressure pitching opposite Longhorn pitcher Taylor Jungmann:
"There's always pressure when you are going against a No. 1 draft pick. But I feel I stood my ground pretty well and kept the ball low and out of the air."
On the early 5-0 lead after two innings:
"That helped my confidence a lot. It's always good to get a couple runs on your side, especially five. I just came out after that and all my nerves kind of got lost after those first couple runs. That was good."
On his career-high five inning outing tonight:
"I thought I paced myself well throughout the game to pitch as many innings as I could."
On his pitching approach tonight:
"I was just trying to throw the ball low and away to keep them off balance. I used my change-up a lot, threw that ball down. Throw the fastball over it to keep them off balance."
On the wind factoring into the pitching performances tonight:
"When the wind is blowing across like that, from your backside, it's hard to throw a breaking ball when you're a right-hander because the wind kind of catches it and dives down. That was pretty hard challenge."
Infielder/Outfielder Barrett Barnes
On being able to hit off Taylor Jungmann unlike most teams this year:
"When he got behind in the count, Coach Spencer had the scouting report that he likes to go fastball behind in the count. So I was just sitting on the fastball and he left it up to elevate and the wind took it out of the ballpark."
On the his approach against Taylor Jungmann:
"My second at-bat he really got on me hard with the breaker because I fell behind so he took advantage of me. I just flipped on the first at-bat and that's how it goes."
On the early 5-0 lead after two innings:
"It's a great feeling to be up by a bunch and to know a little mistake isn't going to hurt you or kill you. We just kept putting runs on the board and just kept pulling the lead away."
On the opening-series win over Texas tonight:
"It's huge especially against Texas. Everyone knows UT is a big rival and a really ranked team. That's all you can really ask for."
University of Texas Head Coach Augie Garrido
On pitcher Taylor Jungmann's struggles on the mound:
"I think they did a great job with the bat. I think what they were doing was crowding the plate and getting right up on the plate and just trying to get the bat on the ball, and they did. (Jungmann) got the ball up in the zone and got solid contact, and the wind carried the rest. It's not an excuse. They hit the ball hard, and they hit it in the right direction. They were just trying to hit it where it was pitched, and they were able to square up the ball. He got behind on the count a lot, but they did a real good job of hitting, a real good job."
On whether Tech's first two innings took Texas out of its normal game:
"Well, we'd rather be ahead, but I think you have to be able to win games in a lot of different ways to be consistent. In this game, it really was a game that should have been won with the long ball, and it wasn't won with the long ball. They had more of them than we did. They did a better job of hitting with runners in scoring position. It's always this dilemma (of) is it the pitching or is it the hitting? Just going, what is it all about? What I know is that they squared off a lot of ball off good pitchers, and they played a good game, a really good game."
On whether the high winds benefited Texas Tech:
"Well, I don't know. I think probably because they practice in it a lot more; they're a lot more comfortable, it's about environment. But they still have to do it. You start sounding like you're making excuses, but the truth is that's it's still a baseball game, the conditions are the same for both teams, and they did a better job of squaring up the ball and hitting with runners in scoring position and driving the ball out of the ballpark."
Catcher Cameron Rupp
On his team's struggles in tonight's game:
"We didn't have the approach that we needed. They play in this all the time, but you can't make excuses, we have to play in it. We swung at more balls down in the zone, where they were swinging at more balls up in the zone where as the ball is up, it has a better chance to get up in the air. In this wind, hit it out to left and get it up in the air and it's going to go. We swung at a lot of pitches down in the zone, which helped their pitcher out a lot. With runners in scoring position, we didn't hit the ball well. With two outs, we couldn't keep a rally going."
On pitcher Taylor Jungmann's performance on the mound:
"He didn't have his stuff tonight. It's one of those things that's going to happen once in a while to a pitcher, and it's one of the first times this year he's struggled with it. He'll bounce back and come out and pitch on Friday for us again next week."
On if as a leader on the team he needs to say something:
"We know what happened; we all saw the same thing. We have to come out tomorrow and play better than we did tonight. We had 11 hits, but we have to string them together and get more runs than just five. We put up a good rally at the end, but we need to do that more consistently."
