June 1, 2001
NCAA Super Regionals| Recap|Box Score|Notes
Stanford Cardinal
Head Coach Mark Marquess:
Opening Statement: It was obviously a big win for us, we got a great start, we swung the bats well and got a great pitching performance from Jeremy [Guthrie]. It was good to get off to a good start against a quality pitcher. We played good defense, I think we swung the bat as well as we have in a couple of weeks. I was pleased with it, yet at the same time, they're very dangerous and they scare you with their bats. I know they'll bounce back and play well tomorrow. We're off to a good start, and hopefully we can get after it again tomorrow.
Q. Were you happy with the back-to-back two out hits tonight?
A. I thought last weekend at the Regional, we didn't really bunch our hits and I thought we had opportunities in a couple of those games to break a game or two open, but we weren't able to do it because we didn't bunch our hits. We did that tonight and that's how we got the four and five-run innings - we bunched them. that was nice to see and hopefully it will continue.
Q. Can you talk about Jeremy's performance with the wind blowing hard?
A. He did a great job. I thought he pitched well last weekend, and I thought he was sharper tonight. He had a good fastball, good location and got a lot of ground balls. The one thing you don't want to do with [South Carolina] is get the ball up, and he did a great job of keeping it down and getting all of his pitchers over. He did a masterful job and he had great control in the strikezone.
Ryan Garko (Player)
Q. Can you talk about your home run in the first inning after the first two batters got out?
A. I thought Chris [O'Riordan] hit the ball really well, he was sitting on a fastball and he threw me a fastball and I thought he might hit me with another one, and he threw a fastball over the plate and the wind was blowing out, so I just got a good pitch to hit, stayed on it and hit it well.
Jeremy Guthrie (Player)
Q. What were you thinking with a 10-0 lead?
A. I thought it was easy to relax with that lead and just go out there and throw strikes. I thought we had some great pitch calls - we were able to work inside and outside against a team that hits the ball well. The defense made good plays on the groundballs when we needed them. I was really relaxed to go out there with a big lead like that.
South Carolina Gamecocks
Head Coach John Tanner
Opening Statement: Unfortunately tonight was all about Jeremy Guthrie and the great job he did on the mound - he was outstanding. Then the big outbursts in the third and fourth innings, they got some hits and did a great job and we weren't able to get any in because Guthrie was doing a great job on the mound. Stanford has a great club and they did a tremendous job tonight.
Q: You had talked about holding Kip [Bouknight] a day, in retrospect does that seem like it would have been a better idea?
A: No, I don't think that was a factor at all, Kip may feel differently, but baseball is a tough game sometimes. He was as good as anybody in the country last weekend but tonight he didn't have one of his better outings. I don't think that another 17 or 18 hours would make a lot of difference. He said he felt good, and you've got to give credit to Stanford.
Kip Bouknight (Player)
Q: Where there any ill effects from last weekend?
A: No, not at all. It was a situation where I made a couple bad pitches in some bad situations with runners on and they did a good job of hitting. They really had a good approach and did a nice job tonight.
Q: You guys were in a similar situation last weekend, does that experience help you out for tomorrow?
A: Certainly, we'll use that to our advantage, if you can call it an advantage. We wanted to get off to a good start, but we're in a hole right now, and we've been in a hole before and I certainly think our guys are up to the challenge. We know we're gonna have to play good baseball. We didn't pitch well tonight and didn't string together enough hits to get it going, but if we'd hung on a little while longer I think the hits would have come along. We just have to forget about this one and move on and be ready to play tomorrow.