Postgame Quotes: Missouri (May 15)

2021 Mississippi State Baseball
Postgame Quotes
Mississippi State vs. Missouri
May 15, 2021

Q: How do you explain what happened this weekend?
CL: I'm having a hard time explaining it right now. We just didn't play well. I said it to our coaches—we never had the momentum the whole weekend. Thursday night we got it when we ran Landon [Sims] out there for about a two-inning stint, but they owned the weekend from the get-go and they pressured us from the offensive side and played good defense. They just outplayed us, and it's frustrating we're at this point in the season playing at home, playing for a lot and we just didn't have a good effort.

Q: What was it about Missouri's offense where there never seemed to be an easy out?
CL: I agree. We probably don't make as good of pitches, we didn't defend as well as we should, but they also played very well and they hit a lot of balls and it feels like they hit a lot of balls in holes. Just a lot of balls they hit found spots. They had some hard-hit ones, too, but they just competed and moved the baseball. They had a lot of hits this weekend.

Q: How do you think this weekend will impact what you have to do in terms of a national seed?
CL: I know y'all think I'm crazy, but I really just don't look at all of it as much. It's really about us having a good game on Tuesday night, and all we can do is control trying to get a good series at Alabama and winning that series there, winning the first game. We have work to do, I would imagine. The RPI number probably went down a little bit losing two at home to [Missouri]. We have to win some games is what we have to do.

Q: Outside of Chase Patrick, your bullpen struggled to throw strikes and execute pitches. Where are you in the process in finding someone to close out games aside from Landon Sims?
CL: It felt good the last couple weeks and then this weekend was really tough. I don't know why. I like a lot of our guys—Preston Johnson, Parker Stinnett, Cam Tullar. And then this weekend we did not make a lot of pitches. Houston Harding has been really good for us all year and he didn't make pitches today. So we just have to get back to practice. I've said it before, we don't get to make a trade so we have to get out there and get the most that we can out of our guys and get good outings.

Q: Where do you sit on your Sunday starter situation?
CL: We haven't had anybody pitch well enough right there to win the job. It'll be a matchup. It'll be who we've had to use over the weekend as we move forward. It's not a comfortable place to be, for someone to win it and go out there and pitch great, but we'll take it from week to week.

Q: Was there anything leading up to this weekend that gave you any inclination that the team would come out like this?
CL: No. We played great last week. This time last week we felt like a million bucks and we had a good week of practice. We didn't get to play a game, so maybe that's why but we scrimmaged on that day. We've been in the same routine we've always been in. We just laid an egg and I have to figure out why.

Q: You talked about the energy, something may have gone wrong, and it just snowballed the rest of the weekend, is that how you saw it and how do you coach against it?
CL: Our guys always bring energy, but when you're chasing from behind the whole time it's hard to have a ton of energy. Last weekend we were at South Carolina and we had the lead, we played with it, we played with a lot of energy. We played as the aggressor [last weekend] and this weekend we just didn't. It is what it is. We chased the whole weekend, and it gets tough to chase. Especially when there's so much on the line. You'd like to get out there and get your feet wet and we gave up runs in the first and second inning to put us in that chase all weekend long.

Mississippi State University Athletics

Postgame Quotes: Missouri (May 15)

Players Mentioned

Houston Harding

Preston Johnson

Chase Patrick

Landon Sims

Parker Stinnett

Cam Tullar

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