June 4, 2016
Recap | Box Score | Russell’s Photos 
Postgame Quotes
Washington vs. Vanderbilt
Vanderbilt head coach Tim Corbin
Opening statement:
“It has been a tough 48 hours. I don’t know really if you can sum it all up. Finale is tough from a human perspective and when you invest in a lot of hours together and then it comes to a halt. It’s never easy. The games were tough today. It was tough baseball for us in a lot of different ways. I don’t mean this in any disrespect to our opponents, but it was tough for us to be the best version of ourselves in a lot of different ways. We were as prepared as we possibly could be. It was just a wide range of actions and emotions that were tough to navigate and especially tonight. I thought the kids bounced back very well in a very difficult situation. You get here early in the morning and play a game and obviously it didn’t go well. And then you wait around to try and play game two and once you do, you respond really well. We just could never hold them down. I give them credit for fighting the way they did. I’m so proud of the kids on so many different levels that I will explain to them personally. I’m proud about how they have gone about here. The last few days have been tough.”
On how to manage the team’s emotions:
“It’s tough to manage emotions with what has happened. It’s really tough. The game in a lot of ways seems insignificant, but at the same time it provides some healing for the kids in the immediate moment. Now that it’s gone then we’ll delve into another level of emotions. They know that it’s coming. They have a whole lot of weight on their shoulders right now. It’s just very difficult to lose a teammate and for it to just happen during the time that you are supposed to compete. I’m just proud that they were able to do that. It would have been great if we had won. It would have been great to move on, but at the same time in the back of their minds that is probably secondary right now. What is primary right now is how they feel about one another and what has happened and that is is tough to get over and they probably won’t get over it for quite some time.”
On how he handled and coached the team throughout the day:
“I don’t know if I was critical, but after the first game I challenged them. I challenged them in the clubhouse. This is baseball; you have the right to do that. It’s competition. As I said yesterday, competition brings out pure emotions in the coaches and in players. It’s what it is supposed to do. At the same time, I can separate and try to teach them how to separate too. When we are inside the arena of competition, we have to do the best job we can at channeling our emotions. Now it’s tough. They were all dragging around a 100-pound weight while they were playing. It’s not fair, but it’s what we had to do.”
On how tough the last conversation in the dugout was:
“It’s short. Because I can’t sum everything up personally in ten minutes and don’t want to. It’s not the right time to do it just because of the conclusion. I will gather my thoughts and do what we always do, create a situation where we will sit down in a classroom and discuss about what has happened and how we go about it. Finality is never easy. It’s the worst. It’s really the worst. It’s really the worst. Just because you spend so much time together. It really stinks.
Vanderbilt’s Bryan Reynolds
On how tough it was to play mentally and physically:
“Baseball is a game of millimeters. You have to there fully mentally and physically if you want to perform your best. I feel like we all gave the best effort we could today we just came up a little short.”
Washington head coach Lindsay Meggs
Opening Statement:
“Right off the bat, I want to congratulate Vanderbilt on an incredible season, and our hearts break for those kids and the Vanderbilt baseball community because of what they’ve had to deal with. Our prayers go out to the family. We talked about it before the game that for these guys to be able to hang together and fight their way through this just shows you how important their culture is and what a great example of it to be able to deal with such a tragic thing and still play baseball. It puts everything in perspective. You know, it’s a heart-breaking loss for them and I’m sure it’s a great win for us but at the end of the day I’m proud of them, Vanderbilt, for the way they exemplified what college athletes are supposed to be about. I’m proud of our guys because they understood how difficult this game was for Vanderbilt to play and yet how important it was for our program, our culture and our future. So, my hat goes off to them. I’m proud of our guys obviously. I thought it was a great college baseball game. I think college baseball is one of the best spectator sports on the planet. There isn’t a clock, you’ve got to get all 27 outs and we talked about it in the dugout. If we can hang around, anything can happen and that’s what you saw tonight. I’m proud of my guys.”
On what it was like being on the other side of what had happened to this Vanderbilt team:
“It’s a really unique set of circumstances. I’ve been on that side where I have lost players before and it really takes, obviously, the wind out of your sails and like I said it helps young players 19-22 years old gain some perspective on what’s really important. I was kind of surprised we played yesterday. I wasn’t critical of that but it’s just, in my mind, exemplified what that Vanderbilt program is all about. I think the family wanted the boys to play and his teammates wanted to honor him by playing and the game got rained out. That’s the culture they’ve created. They are one of the best programs in all of college baseball and this is a good lesson for our guys.”
On the reversal of fortune being able to get a couple of the swings to go their way tonight:
“You know, it’s a great feeling. We struggled last night. We were 0-for-17 with runners in scoring position. We had probably our worst night that we had all year offensively in terms of quality at-bats with runners in scoring position. Baseball on the west coast is pretty competitive and in the Pac-12 you’ve got to put that behind you, like the SEC, and you’ve got to show up and get ready to get back to work. I think this is a great win for west coast baseball. It’s a great win for the Pac-12. I felt like we were under represented, as a conference, in the postseason. We have another team in our league Oregon State, who I felt should have been involved in this thing, and as a Pac-12 head coach I want to see all our programs with the opportunity to move on. So, it’s a great win for our conference not just our program.”
On what Vanderbilt is going through emotionally:
“I had a young man named Philip Bolleto go home for Christmas vacation when I was a Chico State who lived in Compton and got shot and killed at a party. We had time to process that and deal with it. We put his initials on the center field fence and everyday before a game or practice we ran to the center field fence and touched the fence and thought of Philip or anybody else in your life that helped you get to the point that we were. So, I can’t even fathom I really can’t, can’t fathom what it must be like to turn around and play the very next day. They didn’t just play. I mean they had a crazy game earlier today and that’s not Vanderbilt baseball to give up a big inning like that. For them, to bounce back and come out and play us and throw punches going toe to toe with us just shows you how tough those kids are.”
Center fielder Jack Meggs
On the at bat leading up to his go-ahead two-run homer:
“I had kind of been struggling up to that point and you know I really hadn’t been taking good at bats but like we talked about in the dugout and coach said this a lot just to attack the fastball and stay with it. I was looking for a fastball first pitch and I got one and I wasn’t going to let that go to waste and I put a really good swing on it and it jumped off my bat.”
On the mentality facing a deficit almost all game:
“You know, our group never quits. That’s what I love about our guys and that’s been our whole year. We’ve been down and not a lot of people have picked us from the start and really the only one who believes in us is our team and that’s all that matters. There is no quit in us. … It’s just a great win for us.”
