Wake Forest Athletics
NCAA Baseball Regional - Winston-Salem, NC
5/31/2002 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
May 31, 2002
Ernie Shore Field - Winston-Salem, N.C.
Game 1 - Richmond vs. Navy
Richmond head coach Ron Atkins...
On Mike McGirr: "Starting Mike wasn't a gamble at all. We know he's one of our better pitchers, and I think we have three good pitchers. We knew we just had to get him a fews runs. In this game just like in every game, you have to hit the ball to win."
On his team's 50-win season: "This is a special team and they find ways to win. We won a lot of one-run games this season and maybe some games we shouldn't have won and we lost a few games that I thought we shouldn't have lost, but there's no quit in this team. They go at it hard and they're very focused and we felt confident coming into this thing that we had a chance to win and that's what were going to try to do."
Richmond first baseman Vito Chiaravalloti...
On his two home runs: "I tried not to do too much. The last couple of weeks, I've been trying to hit the ball out of the park and trying to do too much for the team. I knew coming in that we just had to give Mike (McGirr) a couple of runs, stay within myself and the hits were going to come behind me, too. Our whole lineup, one through nine, had a great day."
Richmond pitcher Mike McGirr...
On today's start: "I was a little nervous, with this being the first time at the regional, but I don't think there was any real extra pressure."
Navy head coach Steve Whitmeyer...
"We are really excited about being here at the regional, and needless to say we're very disappointed about this game. I think our biggest fear was coming out and not playing well at the beginning of the game. We gave them three runs with two outs and that set the tone."
"We have a really good quality group of guys for the team this year, and I knew they weren't going to give up no matter how far behind we were, and we were pretty far behind at one point."
Navy shortstop Brad Hager...
"We came out and played hard. McGirr threw a pretty good game. He was just beating us, but eventually more pitches came around, and we started hitting more."
