University of Massachusets Athletics
2006 NCAA Softball Amherst Regional
May 21, 2006 | Softball
May 21, 2006
Postgame Quotes: UMass
Head Coach Elaine Sortino Opening Statement
"Today our kids really came to play. Obviously this is a great accomplishment for them. Quite frankly this has been our goal from the beginning of the season, but we knew we had to take it one step of the time. We had great defense today; we got ourselves out of a jam with an amazing play. We had a solid pitching performance from Brandice, we hit the ball when it mattered, we gave ourselves a couple insurance runs. I'm very happy."
Whitney Mollica speaking on the triple play:
"That was the plan. Just stay calm, try to get outs there because that's what we needed to do in that situation."
Brandice Balschmiter on the triple play:
"That was pretty big. I knew we were going to get out of it one way or another. A triple play, you don't see it very often."
Sortino on her visit to the mound prior to the triple play:
"Their best hitter was up. I needed to make eye-contact with everybody in the infield to make sure they weren't dear in the head-lights. We could focus back on what we needed to do one play at a time, slow it down, and make sure that we had good communication. We just had to execute one play at a time. That's the most important thing, being deliberate yet aggressive....I've seen them in more swirling situations, but I think it's still good. It took a while to make eye-contact, but we got it."
Sortino on jumping out to an early lead:
"It sent a good message to Lehigh. It was their top pitcher on the mound and I thought it meant we were ready to play. When we score early we're a great team."
Amanda Morin on the homerun:
"She threw me a flat rise ball. I had two strikes and tried to put something up the middle."
Sortino on the Super-Regionals to come:
"We've seen Northwestern (February 24) so it won't be a mystery. We know what to expect from their pitchers. We started that game really slow. It took us a while to get going. It's going to be a hard-fought situation. We're going to do fine out there. It's the good part about going out early and playing against the big monster teams. You see them, they know what to expect, it's not a mystery, and we can handle it."
Mollica on her error prior to the triple play:
"When I make a mistake like that I hope the next ball comes to me to make up for it. I see the ball up, and am like this is great. Then I see the girl five, ten feet in front of me, so I tag the base. Then I look at Kristi (Stefanoni) and the girls off there too and I threw it there. I've never been in anything like that in my entire life."
Sortino on triple plays she's been involved with:
"I remember one against us. I'll never forget it. University of Dayton in 1996. I can't remember one we've executed, I really can't. I don't know we ever have. Seth (Gerard) knows everything and he believes we haven't."
Balschmiter on her high pitch count:
"Between yesterday and today, two completely different games, two completely different situations....My arm's fine today, I had our trainer rub it out last night. I had a high pitch count (yesterday) but I wasn't even thinking about it."
Postgame Quotes: Lehigh
Coach Fran Troyan on the weekend and today's game:
"First I would like to thank all of the people at UMass, on an outstanding weekend. Hopefully we'll be able to come back again and maybe we can delegate someone else to take care of the weather. Next, I like to congratulate Elaine, her staff, and her team. I thought they played great. They had a great tournament and I think they will represent Northeast softball very well next weekend and, hopefully, beyond. In terms of this game, we knew coming in that we would have one or two really good opportunities to put some runs on the board. I'm not sure what inning it was, but we had the bases loaded, no outs, and probably our best hitter at the plate. Six inches closer to the line and that could have been a couple of runs there, but instead they turned a triple play. As you probably know, a triple play ends the inning. So we got taken out of that inning and no matter how resilient our team was to try to not let that affect us, it certainly was a huge momentum change in the game. If we could have scored maybe one or two runs there, who knows if we could have won the game. When you're playing at this level, sometimes you get breaks and sometimes you don't. That was a huge break for UMass there, and it was a break that they made. They made an outstanding play. I don't think the base runner at third made a running error and maybe the runner at second could have gotten back a little sooner, I just think it was a great play and my hats off to the third baseman for making that play."
On batting against Balschmiter today:
"No, I don't think we approached her any different. It took us yesterday to try and figure out what we were going to do against her. I think we did a pretty good job of putting the ball in play. They made a couple of errors and that gave us a chance, but we weren't able to score a run or two off of those errors."