ACC Baseball Championship
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Game 2: #9 Maryland Terrapins vs. #10 Virginia Tech Hokies

Opening Statement by Virginia Tech Head Coach Chuck Hartman:
Through the first three innings of the game I tried to instill in our young men to go out and have some fun, but that didn't work. We were awful tight, we went through the batting order and nobody swung at the first pitch except one guy, we were just too tight. I thought we wasted a couple innings offensively by the fact that we were so tight and of course we didn't score in the first three innings. Then we picked it up, I thought we would pitch it out, our forte is not offense, if you look at our stats. We are not a very good offensive team. I think the best part about our team is our defense. We are like third in the ACC in defense and we turn double plays ... in fact, we're ranked like sixth in the nation for double plays, and when we miss a fly ball and we don't turn a double play, that's what lost the game. I felt like if we had stayed on top, there is a lot more pressure on them when you're even.

On the missed fly ball causing the loss:
It could have. That happened in what, the second inning? We have one senior who is hurt, and the rest are freshman and sophomores, and one junior. I thought they represented themselves okay. I thought we did get a little tight and didn't play as well as we have played especially defensively. When we get 11 hits we got a good chance to win, of course we still had a chance to win today. That's a lot of hits for us in a game the way we've hit this year.

On the ACC being what he expected it to be:
Well I was fortunate enough to grow up in the ACC country. I came from North Carolina, went to the University of North Carolina, so I knew a little bit about the ACC to say the least. Having played in it and grew up around it, in fact, believe it or not, I played the first year the ACC was played. 1953 is when I entered college, so I am pretty familiar with it. I knew something that we'd have to get used to would be the big crowds: Florida State, Georgia Tech, NC State, where you've got nice crowds. I just think that's awesome for college baseball. I was well pleased. I think the ACC is a great league, I think they have some really great teams, as much as that they have a great atmosphere for their games and if you can't enjoy yourself when you go out there and play, then you must not like baseball. So I was pleased with the facilities in the ACC. I wasn't pleased with how many games we won, but at the same time I thought at days we represented ourselves well, but at times I was a little embarrassed.

On whether or not he thought they could pull out a win after tying the game:
I thought after we tied it, Nicky Bowers would go out, that's kind of his forte when you get in that kind of situation and I thought he would go out and get them out and maybe we could manufacture a run if we could get a base runner in our last inning. I thought we could do something, but they scored, the guy (Will Frazier) hit a pretty good pitch in the hole and there's not a whole lot you can do about it.

Opening Statement by Maryland Head Coach Terry Rupp:
I thought it was a good win for us having come off a two week lay-off because of final exams and we were rested and some of our players were able to get back in the lineup. Dan Melvin had been out of the lineup for weeks, so we got some guys healthy. My main concern was how we swing the bats and obviously we swung the bats very well today.

On how to conserve pitching:
It's a tough situation because you know its do or die and you try and set up your pitching that would be best suited to get you through two games, get you in the tournament and then go from there. But you've got to use everybody you've got in order to get through these games, so we used our closer today, Mike (Meagher) and he came in and shut them down so I don't know if he'll be available for tonight's game but from what I understand they're in the same boat as we are. Everybody's in the same predicament. We're going to have to generate some offense. I think the team that swings the bat better and puts up the most runs and swings the bats better, obviously is going to win these games.

Senior Pitcher Chris Clem:
The last couple of outings that I've had, I've done pretty well and I just brought it into the tournament and got ahead all day, threw my off-speed for strikes. They went fishing a couple of times and I got a lot of ground balls and my teammates made good plays behind me. They hit a couple balls in the sixth (inning) and the seventh (inning), but we kept battling and came back and tied it.

"Like coach said, do or die situation, we have to win this game to get to the next game. We can't worry about Wake Forest, we have to worry about Virginia Tech and how we're going to beat them so we can go into the week. We just had to concentrate on this win right here. The runs were great early in the game, there was a lot of confidence going out there, everybody in the field had confidence, so it was a big win.