June 5, 2010
Louisville 7, Vanderbilt 1
NCAA Louisville Regional – Jim Patterson Stadium
Postgame quotes
Vanderbilt head coach Tim Corbin
Opening statement
Well I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. You saw what happened. They’ve got a kid, a freshman, who went out there and pitched well, held us to basically three hits. Just a solo home run was what we came up with, so you have to give credit to them. They pitched well and played good defense, and our guy didn’t pitch a shutout, so we lost 7-1. That’s basically what it was.
On why Vanderbilt had so many groundball outs
Because they were hitting the top of the baseball.
On whether it’s more disappointing losing while pitching Sonny Gray
No, it’s a baseball game and we lost. That’s the only disappointment. I don’t really care who’s out there. We just lost the game. I don’t care who’s pitching. It doesn’t really matter. That kid’s pretty good. Obviously he pitched older than a freshman. He didn’t look like a freshman to me. He was hitting his spots pretty well. He was away early and in late and was tying up our hitters. We hit a lot of top of the ball, a lot of those outs were easy outs. We didn’t really put pressure on them.
On whether last year’s experience is an advantage
I don’t know. We’ll see. We came out of the loser’s bracket a little differently. We won the early game against Indiana, which Sonny pitched. We’ll see what happens. We’ve got to go through this tournament. It can be done. It’s a little more difficult road, but we’re going to have to play better from an offensive standpoint than we did today.
On Louisville’s familiarity with Vanderbilt
We had that same familiarity, so I don’t think that mattered. I just think the kid pitched a good game and he shut us down. That’s really all there is to it. No sense in looking beyond that, whether we played them 100 times or 1 time. That kid pitched a good game. He shut us down, and we threw our best out there and I thought he did a nice job. He did a real nice job. You get some momentum later in the game. We had no momentum during the course of the game, so we were kind of pitching uphill the entire time. I thought Sonny did a good job. I thought he rebounded very well after the first inning and contained them. It’s a very potent offensive team. They’ve been around for awhile, they carry themselves well, and everyone in their lineup thinks they’re going to hit. Tough group to contain.
On playing Illinois State on Sunday
Well, we’ve played them now 22 innings, so we’ve seen a lot of their pitchers. They can hit too. They’ve got a pretty good left-handed line-up. It’s going to present a challenge tomorrow. We’ve seen enough off them to understand what they can do and what they can’t do.
On holding off using Chase Reid and Drew Hayes in Sunday’s game
Don’t hold back anything, one game at a time. Can’t play the fourth unless you win the third.
On if there was any hangover from Friday’s game
No, no fatigue. We didn’t swing it that well, that’s all there is to it. No fatigue. We were rested. We came in feeling good. No witchcraft to it. Koch pitched a good game.
On needing more offensive production
I think so. More than one run. We will though. We’ve got capability to do it, but we’ve got to play better than we did today.
Vanderbilt pitcher Sonny Gray
On Louisville’s first-inning home run
I was trying to get the fastball in there, and he jumped on the first pitch and that’s the game. Walk the guy with two outs and the next batter hits a home run, and that’s how it went today.
On Vanderbilt’s overall performance
You never expect to struggle. I guess you can say, I thought we’d come out and play a little better. But as coach said, their kid did a good job today, and that’s how the game was. That’s how it turned out.
On settling down after the first inning
I think I started getting my change-up for strikes. I think their gameplan was to swing at everything and hit the fastball early. I started throwing some change-ups in there for strikes and getting them to roll over, getting them to ground out. I think in the eighth inning, I left it up two or three times and they didn’t miss it.
Give them credit, they didn’t miss it.
Vanderbilt third baseman Jason Esposito
On Vanderbilt’s struggles on Saturday
I don’t think it’s from a lack of effort. Tip your hat to the pitcher, he did well. I felt we put good swings on the ball, just didn’t make solid contact.
On how the Commodores will approach the next game
Same mentality as before. Go into the game, look to put guys on base, look to score them, look to play defense behind our pitchers. Same mentality.
On his home run
You hope to spark the offense in some way. It just didn’t happen for us.