Everything JMU head coach Marlin Ikenberry said before playing South Carolina
Ahead of the Raleigh Regional, James Madison head coach Marlin Ikenberry spoke to the media about the match-up against South Carolina. Here’s what he had to say.
On what it’s like having a player like Joe Vogatsky
“It’s been great to watch all of these guys progress, you know obviously for Fen for three years and Joe for four, you know how hard they work and what they put into their game to get where they’re at. The option that he had was all due to his success and having him come back and enjoying this ride is more special with his teammates. That’s what we preached all year, just take one game at a time and play for each other. I put them in tight situations, playing the schedule we played and I wanted to see kind of how we would respond and how we encounter ourselves throughout the entire season. I will tell you the last 14 days have been pretty, pretty stressful. Going into the Troy series and then obviously in our conference tournament, and then we heard our name and the excitement of these guys kind of shows, it was like an exhilaration of all their hard work they’d done over all of these years to put us in this situation.”
On playing in the NCAA Tournament after a drought
“It was really, really great being on the bus and being with the guys. You know, you never know with the end of the season, you know, with the way it all came about. Just like we do normally, it was really nice to get on the bus and almost do the same trip we did five years ago when we came down here to NC State.”
On preparing to play South Carolina
“I’ve watched a little bit this year and they’re just a solid club. Every team that’s playing this time of year is a good club. You got to execute and play really clean baseball to have success. We prepare these guys under pressure all year to perform and it’s how we practice, it’s how we go about our business and I’m really glad to be here.”
“I think one of the things just about playing baseball and pitch play defense is, kind of what I’ve always preached my entire career, and if we do that, we’ll be fine. Their offense is pretty dynamic in a lot of different ways. You just got to do what we do and focus on our process and what we do well.”
On Friday’s starting pitcher
“Tomorrow we’ll start Todd Mozoki.”
“He’s made a lot of adjustments throughout the season, and he was a weekend starter for us early and pretty much for the first half of the season. And as he was making these adjustments, we felt like it takes the pressure off of him to put him back in the bullpen and he’s shown that he’s really well for us in certain situations to give us a chance. Really the big thing for him I think, that the adjustments he’s made are paying off.”
