March 19, 2011

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South Carolina Head Coach Ray Tanner Quotes
Opening Statement
Whew. For two days we’ve had stellar pitching on our side and had chances to win. They’ve had great pitching as well. It seems like we’ve played up hill the last 18 innings, but we were able to push one across at the end to even the series. It’s a great win for us. Hopefully tomorrow we have a chance to have another nice game. We got a great start from (Steven) Neff today. The only run they got was an inning where they didn’t get a hit. It was a great win for us; we kept battling. There’s going to be a lot of these in the SEC, and we understand that. You’ve got to do what you can to win your share of close games. We were very happy our guys battled today to get a win.

On the importance and impact of a dramatic win…
In the big picture you can’t make too much out of it, but the truth of the matter is we’ve played up hill the last two days. We’ve been behind. We might be even in games, but we haven’t evened up the innings. I think it helps us some. It’s only one win, but I think there’s an opportunity for some of our guys to relax a little bit. At the end of the day the most important thing is to get a win. You don’t rehash everything as much when you win. Just getting a “W” today hopefully will help us relax a little tomorrow.

On the changing lineup…
I think you just have to keep plugging. When you look at the line score from today, 10 hits, two runs, no errors. We got ten hits; it felt like it was three. That’s part of the game. Jackie (Bradley Jr.) has been hitless his last three games, which is a little bit unusual. I don’t know the right combination right now. We don’t have a lot of depth. We’ve got guys with experience that played key roles for us last year, and we don’t want to give up on them. It’s a daily battle.

Scott Wingo, Second Base
On bouncing back from the five first game of the series…
We knew we didn’t play our best game yesterday. We said that wasn’t us; we came out today with fight and focus. We were ready to go.

Steven Neff, Pitcher
On his performance today…
I thought I was pretty good. I thought all I needed to do was throw strikes and let my defense play behind me.

Adrian Morales, Third Base
On the importance and impact of a dramatic win…
I think it’s really important to have his kind of win. It builds character. It’s good to get them in these early in the season because it makes us stronger as we go on.

Christian Walker, First Base
On the importance and impact of a dramatic win…
That’s about as exciting as it gets right there, especially to get us going into the third game of the series with a split. To get that last run scored in the ninth, it’s huge, huge momentum-wise. Coach always tells us that winning on Sundays gets you championships. Hopefully we can get this win tomorrow.