UC Irvine Quotes - UC Irvine (43-18) vs. Virginia (54-10)
June 13, 2011 | Baseball
UC Irvine Coach Mike Gillespie
Opening Statement:
"I think that I'm going to state the obvious. You can imagine that for us this is a very difficult spot. I'm proud of our guys. I hope they know that and that they do know that. This was a great game. Everybody sold out-just beat it up and gave it everything they had and left everything on the field. I think it was a very, very impressive effort by everybody. Hats off to Virginia. We knew coming in here that they were an outstanding team, and they confirmed that. Obviously we're disappointed. When you get this close, it's hard to find the good in things. This has been a fabulous experience. We got to come to a great, great place. This has been a great experience for all of us. I think the folks at the University of Virginia, at least from our perspective, did a fabulous job of hosting this Super Regional. They dealt with a lot of adversity as far as the weather. It's been truly great. Everywhere we've gone, everybody we met-we've been treated well. We've been shown why there's an expression 'Southern hospitality.' I recommend The Boathouse to you, and I recommend The Downtown Grille. I'm a big fan of Brian O'Connor. I trust that everybody here and everybody in this community is a big fan of his. What they've done is not easy. What they've done, in fact, is very, very hard to do. In the period of the eight years that he's been here, they've built a program that's on the short list of the best programs in the nation. It's not easy and it doesn't always go right. I think if Coach O'Connor and his staff are together for a long period of time, everybody will come to appreciate-maybe they already do, I hope so-that it's a special program. They're well schooled and highly disciplined. It's a true program now. It's not just a good team; it's a premier program. What's been done here is fabulous. Hats off to everybody that's here."
On whether being hit by ball affected pitcher Matt Summers:
"It hit his glove and then it clipped his ankle. It's a great question, and I don't have an answer for it. The pitches that he threw afterwards-his stuff was still good. Like everyone else, he's a supreme competitor so it's no surprise that he would say five times that he was fine. He pitched with it. If it was clear to me that his stuff was no good, we would've had to make a change. We didn't have a guy that we wanted to bring into that situation."
"I think he did have his velocity back. The pitch that (Chris) Taylor hit, to his credit-he got a pitch that he could handle. He wore us out all weekend quite frankly. There's not a lot of guys that we would've liked to see come up in that situation. Very least of all, he was on the short list of that."
On disappointment:
"Ending the bottom of the eighth with that double play was just huge. It was a lot of momentum to get that run. We all felt it. We were just taking it one out at a time. We got those two quick outs. They were tough outs. They weren't going down without swinging. They were ball-playing and things happen when you do that. Obviously it was a tough loss, but we're confident that we went down with our best guy on the mound. They beat our best, so hats off to them."
On whether he was thinking of advancing when team was ahead:
"It's hard not to. Obviously the butterflies are going. You can picture that moment. You dream about it as a little kid. One strike away is tough."
Jimmy Litchfield
On loss:
"It's obviously tough. Freshman year, coming in and being one strike away from the dream. It's tough when you're up and then you're down. The swing of emotions is just really tough. I couldn't have asked for a better year. It was a great year and a great experience. It's been amazing. It's been the best year of my life."
On emotion of elimination game:
"There was so much emotion this whole game. It was such a close game. Anything could've gone either way. We got our break and then hats off to them."
