Bucknell University Athletics
Gene Depew's Quotes from the Tallahassee Baseball Regional Pre-Tournament Press Conference
5/29/2008 8:00:00 AM | Baseball
May 29, 2008
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -
Bucknell baseball coach Gene Depew, Florida State coach Mike Martin, Florida's Kevin O'Sullivan and Tulane's Rick Jones spoke with the media on Thursday afternoon before the start of the Tallahassee Baseball Regional.
View the press conference through All-Access (Free)
Below are Depew's comments to the media along with Martin's remarks on facing Bucknell.
Bucknell Coach Gene Depew
Opening remarks:
"Thank you. It is certainly a pleasure for us to be here. It is an honor for us to be representing Bucknell and the Patriot League in this tournament. I have to be honest with you; this would not have been my choice of places to come because of the caliber of competition that's here, number one, and, number two, I've already been hustled. Coach told me it's a good thing the weather hasn't heated up yet down here. Relative to where we're coming from, it is a very, very hot day. But we're looking forward to the tournament. Our team has played pretty well the last few weekends, earning the opportunity to get here and we're certainly looking forward to seeing how we measure up with the very fine schools that are here. We're going to go out and practice this afternoon and look forward to tomorrow evening's game and beyond that to Saturday's competition and see how we can get ourselves to perform. Our goal is to really try and play as well as we can, to try and not give away anything with errors and mental mistakes. We are just going to try and play solid baseball and hope that we can compete and see what happens."
On Bucknell's pitching rotation:
"Our rotation right now is we are going to start Mathew Wilson in tomorrow evening's game. Mat is a senior who has been our No. 1 pitcher throughout the year when he's been healthy. That has not been the case all year long. I'm sure if you've read anything about us, you know we have a young man named Jason Buursma who has an awful lot of honors and very good stats. Jason will be probably in the relief role if we have that opportunity. If not, we have the flexibility of then making him the starting pitcher in Saturday's game. Our other two weekend starters are both freshmen and I'm confident that either of them can mix it too, but we are doing it one game at a time right now."
On Looking at opponent Florida State:
"I see too much offense and guys that have great numbers. We're not going to be able to afford to give them anything and hopefully we're going to be able to make the defensive plays that we have to make and that's the only way I think we have to be competitive with them. In our offensive lineup, I think that eight of our guys are hitting .300 or better. I know we're going to face very quality pitching, good velocity that we probably don't face everyday in the Patriot League, but we have seen some guys that have thrown hard and have had our share of success with that. We just hope to be able to go out, as I said, and play good defense and hang in there and see what we can do."
General philosophy on facing Collegiate Baseball National Player of the Year Buster Posey of FSU:
"I think that depends on the game situation, we certainly want to be very careful with him (Posey). I don't think we've faced anyone quite like him this year and we are certainly going to be as careful as we can with him."
On what it would mean for the Bucknell baseball program to pull off an upset:
"It would be obviously a very big thing for us. We are looking forward to the opportunity to see how we do measure up. We've had other programs at our school that have done some things like that. We have a basketball team that has had some success in the NCAA Tournament and the positive things that have come from that have been outstanding. If we were to do something like that, I'm sure that those results would be outstanding for us."
Florida State Coach Mike Martin
On facing Bucknell:
"I just want to say to Gene that Bucknell is a university that is very dear to my heart now because I don't know another football stadium in the entire country that is named after a baseball player. As he (Gene Depew) got up here and discussed the difficulty of playing so-called different competition. He beat a club six-out-of-eight this year that came in here three short years ago and we were lucky to win against Army, lucky to win. So I'm sure that tomorrow night's ballgame will be one of great competition for both clubs."
