The University of Mississippi Athletics
Postgame Quotes: Southern Miss vs. Troy
6/1/2007 | Baseball
TROY HEAD COACH
BOBBY PIERCE
Opening Comment
"Well, this game obviously did not start the way that we had planned. We had some pretty routine defensive miscues that kind of took us out of the game right from the beginning. At this venue in a regional tournament in games of this magnitude it's very difficult when you put yourself that far in a hole due to some mistakes you've made defensively. It's especially hard When you've got a guy on the mound that is going to pitch well and a team that is going to be difficult to score against. I didn't expect that our experience would take us down the exact opposite road, but it was senior players making the mistakes, and I really don't have an answer for that."
On Southern Miss
"I thought that early on that Southern Miss was the more aggressive team. Came in today with more of a feel of where they were and what they wanted to do in the ballgame, and our ball club was a little more nervous about the situation."
CLINT ROBINSON, SR., FIRST BASEMAN
On the final innings
"You never want to put it on cruise control. When coach talks about seeing us make mistakes, I'm one of them. I don't make excuses. I let my team and my coach down. You could kindof tell in the first two innings that it was all going backwards for us. We've just got to come back tomorrow and figure out how not to make little mistakes."
On catching the ball in right field
"I didn't have my sunglasses on, and I can't explain why I did that . Getting the ball up in the sun, I didn't quite do a good job shielding myself from the sun. It just got caught up in the sun, and there wasn't much I could do after that. It was my fault."
On the loss
"A lot of guys deal with it differently. I don't know how the whole team felt. When stuff starts going wrong, you start pressing and you try harder, and then when it doesn't go your way, you try harder again. And that's not the way to play the game. We weren't having fun, we weren't doing the little things. We just have to come back tomorrow and have fun with it."
SOUTHERN MISS
HEAD COACH CORKY PALMER
Opening Comment
"We played a complete game today. It was a hitters day. We swung the bat well. Ryan Belanger pitched tremendous. He gave up a few hits, but he was always able to fight back and come out of it. Although it was a hitters day, he put a good hitting team to bed pretty quick. This is probably the best fielding team we've had in a while and with zero errors today, we showed that. It helped Ryan (Belanger) tremendously when we made the plays on defense like we did."
On Luke Adkins homerun in the first inning
"I think the homerun in the first inning was huge. After batting practice today with the sun out and the wind blowing out, I could tell it was a hitters day."
On starting pitcher Ryan Belanger's performance on the mound
"I thought Ryan was pretty sharp. He faced the hits and did what he had to. He threw a good game and got the win for us."
RYAN BELANGER, SR., PITCHER
On the Eagles' performance against Troy
"Last year they played us pretty tough (in the Tuscaloosa Regional) and they played us tough in the regular season, so it was nice to go out there and put it to them like we did. Watching the guys swing it like they did and play defense behind me made the pitching easy. It was just an all-around great game."
On the absence of Trey Sutton
"Trey is one of our best hitters and it hurts losing him, but Bo Davis stepped in and did a great job. We are going to fight with him and continue to fight without him. He's still rooting us on and is a great guy. He's still with us."
BRIAN DOZIER, SO., SHORTSTOP
On jumping on the Trojans early
"We came out early on top. The biggest thing in the past has been our inability to score consistently in innings; just having a couple of big innings and that's it. We did a great job today of scoring a lot of runnings in the first inning and adding on after that which was big for us."
