Chattanooga vs. Memphis Postgame Quotes
5/21/2011 12:00:00 AM | Softball
May 21, 2011
Chattanooga Quotes
Head Coach Frank Reed
Opening statement:
“For some of you old-timers, you may remember a song, ‘What a Difference a Day Makes.’ You know it’s nice to have (Tiffany) Baker and (Michelle) Fuzzard back, pretty healthy. Yesterday was just one of those crazy days. I didn’t feel like we played to what Chattanooga softball is all about. I think that today we came out and showed a little more of what we are all about. We are excited about being in the finals, and kudos to the kids and how hard they played today.”
On the confidence level of the team:
“(The confidence was) good today. It is a loose team; they have fun in the dugout. Sometimes if you look down there you would think that we were not doing our job coaching. That’s just the way we play. We sort of adapted to them early in the year and if they are not loose, they are not having fun, they are not playing well, then I think yesterday was indicative of that. We had two of our major players sick, and everyone got tired. The dugout was quiet. We played that way. The wins will come. We felt coming in that we had a good program. We wanted to prove something not only to ourselves, but to the softball world. Hopefully we will get a chance tomorrow to prove that further.”
On the challenges of a team like Alabama:
“We feel like Alabama is a good team. We know that they are a good team. There are good teams all across the nation. We played them in the fall, and they beat us in the seventh. We played Georgia, and they beat us in the seventh, so we are right there tapping on the door. We feel like we can play with them. I think that if you were to ask them who they would rather play they would have said Memphis than us. The challenges are that they are strong one through nine, and they have great pitching. We will have to step our game up to play, and I think we can. It is exciting to be here, and it is an exciting chance to play them. We will go out there and see what happens.”
#4 Nikki Waters, RHP
On winning two in a row:
“ It’s an awesome feeling. It keeps us motivated to keep pushing forward to the next game.”
#23 Tiffany Baker, 3B
On how hard she hit the ball:
“I think that those are some of the harder one’s that I have hit in my career, for sure. It has probably ranked up there in the top. I was more focused because being sick you have to kind of focus on one thing, and I was just trying to focus on the ball and break everything down and slow everything down. It just went my way today.”
Memphis Quotes
Head Coach Windy Thees
Opening statement:
“Well except for one 0-2 pitch and the fact that we didn’t win, it was a great game. I think the people here watching had a great day of softball to watch.”
On the team's resilience:
“We were ready to have a comeback. We had it all planned out. We were going to get people on, get them over, score them, get a walk-off hit because we hadn’t done that this year. This has been a year of firsts for us. We beat our first ranked team, we swept our first conference games on the road, we finished with a winning record in conference for the first time and we are at the NCAA regionals for the first time. I can’t even tell you how many firsts we’ve had this year. I thought this is going to be our first walk-off hit, and it’s going to be awesome. I still can’t figure out how it didn’t happen.”
On what she told the team after the game:
“I told them that I love them, and that I’m proud of them. They are the classiest bunch of girls you ever want to be around. I hope my daughters grow up to be just like them.”
