Postgame Quotes

May 29, 2009

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Tennessee Tech Head Coach Matt Bragga

On Game “Well I have to say it was a difficult game to lose. I felt like we had a chance to win it late and didn’t. I think Clemson had a leadoff man on maybe six or seven innings out of the nine and it is tough to win ballgames when that happens. I tip my hat to them, they did a great job and proud of our guys and disappointed that we lost because we expect to win.”

Making a Statement “Well it does. It doesn’t matter who we play, we are going to play hard. I am proud of our guys. It is hard to come back from a loss like this, but I know our young men and they are very competitive and will be ready to go at three o’clock tomorrow I guarantee you that.”

On Coming out aggressive “I don’t think they took us lightly, because I know Coach Leggett enough to know that his teams are going to come ready to play. Is it possible, sure it is. Everyone has been telling us we are the underdogs and we knew that coming in. I think more than anything Ryan pitched a great game and our guys played hard, maybe not good enough to win on the scoreboard. We had some good efforts that made the score what it was.”

On First Baseman being too far off the line in 9th “Yes, and that is probably my fault, you hate to look back because you need to move on when it is the next pitch, but at that point in the game it is too far off the line because a double scores two runs with the speed they had on the bases. Do I look at the plays and say, man we needed to do that better, yes I do.”

On Dennick “It is great. Ryan Dennick has come on strong for us late. He was a competitive type closer for us, and late in the year we made an adjustment and this is his fifth start. He is phenomenal, and is going to get a chance at the next level and should. We have been blessed to have this young man in our program.”

Decision to Take out Dennick “He came to us and said he was out of gas, and we want guys to be honest with us. The last thing we want is for guys to go back out there in the 8th inning knowing he is out of gas. He came to us and told us that so we went with Lee Henry who has been great for us all year.”

Playing with Fire “No question, against a great team like Clemson it is going to catch up with you. It was six or seven innings they had a leadoff man on that scores 40% of the time. We played with fire, absolutely. A great team is finally going to take advantage of that.”

Ryan Dennick

On Pitching “I knew Clemson is going to be a great hitting team from the ACC. I got to mix my pitches really well, I can’t just keep feeding them fastballs because they are going to drive them all over the ballpark. I had to change it up and let my defensive work, and that worked for most of the ball game.”

Clemson Head Coach Jack Leggett

On Game “This was a typical tournament game. Tennessee Tech did an outstanding job; they pitched well and kept us off-balance. We couldn’t find a good hit, and had a rough 8th inning but got 2 back. We had a rough 4 innings. Chris [Epps] had a big bunt and then Schaus followed with a clutch hit. Tennessee Tech is well-coached and they played hard, and fortunately we came up with a bit hit at the end.”

On Johnson and Epps “Addison kept his head in the game, and both guys always play with a good attitude. The bunt that Chris hit, it couldn’t happen to a better kid in a big situation. I’m happy it was him.”

On Stolz “Stolz has been doing a good job. There was a smaller strike zone and he found his way on base. We were trying to tie the game for 5 innings, and it was frustrating for us.”

On 6-day layoff “When you have so much time off, you’re not as sharp offensively and that’s what happened today. It took a while for us to get into it and we were facing a good pitcher. You can’t simulate situations like this in practice. We kept ourselves in the ball game mentally and that was good.”

On Oklahoma State “Oklahoma State will be a tough opponent tomorrow. I saw 3 innings [of their game] earlier, and it’s not going to be easy. I expected a hard game today, now we can focus on tomorrow.”

Clemson LF Jeff Schaus

on the come-from-behind win “It was really frustrating for us the first 8 innings, but we knew we had a chance at the end.”

On 6-day layoff “We had to find our stride after 6 days off. This game was a little close, but we’ll be more relaxed going into tomorrow.”

On tomorrow’s game “We got an exciting win in the 9th, and we’re facing a good pitcher tomorrow so we’ll have to come to battle.”

Clemson PH Addison Johnson

on win “I was trying to make sure I saw strikes and do anything I could to get on base.”

Clemson Pitcher Graham Stoneburner

on win “I was a little down on myself at first, I have to make better pitches out of the bullpen. But I got better and just tried to keep the game in reach and give us a chance at the end.”