May 25, 2006

ACC Baseball Championship
Game 5
Florida State 7, North Carolina 6

FLORIDA STATE QUOTES

Florida State head coach Mike Martin

On closer Luke Tucker
He knows now that we are going to go get him in the eighth. We did not do this early but we started going to him a couple weeks ago in the eighth. We just made up our mind that if we had a chance to win it - what was a little different today was we went with him in a tie ballgame. I've seen it done and I am not a really an advocate of it but in a tournament when you're down a game, he needs his work. If you wait around you may not bring him in with a tie, so we just went ahead and rolled the dice and brought him out there in a tie ballgame.

On seeing his team compete and win
That is Florida State University, whether it is football, basketball, baseball, golf, we're known to play hard and that's one of the first things I looked for when I came to the ballpark today. Would our ball club compete like their reputation, and they proved it throughout 27 outs. The fact that we won is very important, but effort and playing as a team is what our University is about. This is very important to me as a Seminole and as a coach, this was a big win. North Carolina is very deserving of their high RPI and to beat them is going to enhance our RPI .This was our 40th win, so we hope it is going to impress the committee to enable us to achieve a goal of ours.

On reaching 40 wins this season
Fourty is a big number, it is an important number when you play 56 games. It is a very important measuring stick that is used by the committee.

Florida State pitcher Luke Tucker On coming in game in the eighth inning
Yes I do, I love that situation. A tie ballgame, I know I only need to give our hitters a few innings and they can come through for us. And they did.

Florida State first baseman Dennis Guinn On hitting the grand slam
Our backs were against the wall the whole game and I thought our team was battling and getting on base and moving everyone up. I was glad to have that chance. It is a great feeling to put us ahead at that point.

Florida State centerfielder Shane Robinson On scoring five runs in the bottom of the sixth
It was big momentum booster for our team. Our guys were staying positive the whole game, even down and when North Carolina came out fighting. We just never gave up. We have guys on our team that can change the game with one swing of the bat like Dennis did. Tip your hat to that guy for getting it going and pulling ahead and staying positive the whole game.

NORTH CAROLINA QUOTES

North Carolina head coach Mike Fox

Opening statement
Obviously, it was a great game. Congratulations to Florida State. We seem to always just have great games with them, close games. They got a couple of big swings of the bat. I thought both teams played extremely hard, just like you would expect in an elimination game. They made the plays when they needed to and got some big hits. Obviously the grand slam was huge. That's what it takes, I think, in this tournament. Against good teams it's going to be one or two big plays. Big strikeout, big defensive play, big swing of the bat. So congratulations to them, and we'll go home and regroup and get ready for next weekend.

On having so many close losses to Florida State in the ACC Tournament over the last few years
That's baseball. You have to take the good with the bad. You've been on the other side when you've won some games in the bottom, and you coach long enough, you play long enough, I think that's the great thing about this game, it teaches you so much. The fact that it's one team, I think that's just the quirks of it. It doesn't hurt any less or not depending on who the team is. That's still just the way it is. It's two pretty evenly matched teams, I thought, that just played hard. It's going to come down to that, probably. You knew it once the game was tied. Once we got the base hit to tie it, you knew it was probably going to come down to some sort of dramatics.

On North Carolina's pitching performance today
We thought (Dennis) Guinn hit a pretty decent pitch. Robert's (Woodard) just such a competitor. He probably just missed a couple of spots a little bit. (Buster) Posey got his bat on one and just hit it in the right spot. And we really got a tough break on the ball back up the middle. I think if Robert doesn't touch that one it's an out because (Josh) Horton's right there hopefully to make that play. They took advantage of that. I don't want to kind of second guess, I do that enough on my own in private whether we should have stuck with him maybe not as long and gone with (Jonathan) Hovis. He's been there for us all year long and he's just such a competitor, and if he'd have gotten a groundball double play, it would have been a moot point. I'm not going to worry about it too much.

North Carolina sophomore 1B Chad Flack On his performance in this year's ACC Tournament (5-for-9, 3 R, 5 RBI, 2 HR in two games) and getting UNC off to good starts in the games Throughout the season we've actually depended on our pitching a lot more. We've not scored until the later innings. They've pitched the 1-0 games, the two-run ballgames all the time. It makes it a little better if we can get a couple of runs'p lead and let them relax a little bit. The way we played this weekend, we didn't play really that great yesterday, but today we played great and either team could have won that ballgame.

On Florida State's pitching today, particularly that of Tyler Chambliss and Luke Tucker They had great breaking balls, and they knew where they were throwing them. Tucker had a great slider he threw. Actually, that's all he threw me the whole at-bat. But he had it working today, and they threw well.