Coe Post Game Quotes

Head coach Bob Timmons on the pitching performance of Ashlee Simon:  “I was very proud of her.  A freshman coming in and, as we were just saying, seven strikeouts are par for the course for her, gave up the two hits, but the most important thing, I felt, was that there were no walks.  They had to earn it to get on.  We had a couple of errors behind her, but it didn’t seem to faze her.  I think one of them (the errors) she had herself.  But, I’m just very proud of her and she did a very good job for us, and has done all year.”

Freshman Ashlee Simon on giving up a single to start the game:  “It’s not the first time it’s happened, so I just tried to keep my composure out there and work on the next hitter.”

Simon on facing a lineup with three all-Americans:  “I didn’t even realize that they had three all-Americans.  I just took each batter as the same.  It was a strong lineup one through nine so I just looked at them all as individuals instead of as three all-Americans.”

Timmons on the run that was scored:  “Amy Hanse has been hitting the ball very, very well for us all season as our senior first baseman, and she had some good at-bats.  She hit the ball hard I think two previous times before she hit that ball hard (in the fifth inning), and we had a number of chances when we did put the ball in play with some authority, but it was right at somebody.  My comment to the team each time they came in was to keep putting the pressure on.  Somebody’s going to step up and it’s going to get through and we’re going to score one.  I was hoping to score more than one, but it was a big hit for us from our senior first baseman.” 

Timmons on the pressure of playing in the National Championship Series:  “As I was telling the team, this is gravy.  As far as pressure, yes there is pressure on every team that comes in here now, but it’s a different kind of pressure.  There isn’t another step.  We’ve gotten to the World Series, and now we just want to play well.  If the chips fall where we’d like to have them fall, that would be great.  My goal is to just have them play well.”

Salisbury Post-Game Quotes:

Salisbury Head Coach Margie Knight:

On the performance by Ashlee Simon of Coe: “She pitched a great game, no question. She was able to get our batters to keep fishing at her high pitches. We were telling them to lay off of those but I guess they looked extremely tempting. We had a ton of pop-ups and I think that’s was really hurt us, not being able to put the ball in play where they had to make some plays.

On if she thought the bats would eventually come around: “They better come around tomorrow because we face another really outstanding pitcher. I think when you get here, all eight teams are seasoned, all eight teams are very good, all eight teams have been road tested and have been warriors to get out of the regions they were in.

On only having hits in the first and seventh inning in the two-hitter and three All-Americans in the lineup for Salisbury: “We made several adjustments and unfortunately none of them worked. We moved up in the box, we moved back in the box. We even had some people who usually don’t bunt, bunt the ball. When we had Kelsey [Mills] do that that kind of caught them by surprise. And then we unfortunately bunted into a double play on the next pitch. We were trying a variety of things that just didn’t work our way today.

On getting your team up to play in an elimination game after losing by one run following a streak of winning 35-of-36: “We had a pretty tough loss,  3-0 to Neumann, facing a similar pitcher [May 7, NCAA First Round, ending Salisbury’s 30-game winning streak]. Nice rise-ball pitcher. Several strikeouts, got some pop ups. And we were able to regroup. Will be able to that tomorrow? I guess tomorrow will be the test. We’ll have a team meeting and go through our normal routine. We’re not going to change anything we’ve been doing all season. We didn’t get here by making drastic changes if we lose a game or didn’t get enough hits or made an error. We’ll keep doing things we’ve been doing and hopefully we’ll be back.

On the rivalry between Salisbury-Cortland: “We’ve got a pretty deep rivalry. [Cortland State head coach] Julie [Lenhart] and I have gone at it here three or four times at the national championship. It’s a pretty good rivalry there. We have pretty extensive information on them. We didn’t come in empty handed. And actually the scouting report we had on Coe was very accurate. We’ll look and see if this one [Cortland report] is. I was able to scout them today with one of my assistants and we have quite a bit of information and hopefully we’ll be ready to go tomorrow.”