Baseball Postgame Quotes

June 2, 2000

MISSISSIPPI STATE COACH PAT MCMAHON: “Nothing has come easy for our ball club, and tonight you have to give an awful lot of credit to Clemson. They were very opportunistic and took advantage and swung the bats very well. We’ve been in this position before, and I know we will give every effort tomorrow. I’m very excited about the opportunity to be able to compete tomorrow.

“As you train and work all year long, today was game one of a conference series. We’re ready to play. It’s obviously a very difficult loss for all of us, but how you handle adversity is key to being successful. These young men have battled and done that all year long, and we’re excited about continuing our quest tomorrow.”

CLEMSON COACH JACK LEGGETT: “We started off very quickly and felt pretty confident in the first inning. Then an inning later we’re scrambling from behind again. We got a tremendous relief appearance from Kevin Lynn. He put on a clinic about what a long relief specialist has to do. We really didn’t want to have to use him tonight for that role or for that long. But it just happened to work out that he was the guy we called upon and he was ready.

“I thought we played excellent defense and made some great plays. We got some timely hits especially in those two innings when we scored most of our runs. I thought we played well offensively and we ran the bases well. It is very important to win the first game. We tried the other way last year, a couple different times. That is the hard way to do it. We still have to come out and play very tough tomorrow because if they play well and even things up and go into a one game series on Sunday, that is not how you want it. You want to try to come out here and play aggressive tomorrow night and hopefully play well, but it does allow me to get some sleep tonight. It makes you relax a little bit and come back tomorrow with your senses about you and not have to press, and I think that is the important thing about it.”