Weekly Q&A: Head coach Carol Hutchins
2/16/2005 12:00:00 AM | Softball
On the first weekend overall
"The dynamic is so far, so good. The key will be when things are not going our way so much, but I thought even in the Baylor game, we had a couple rough innings and the leadership held it together. They did not get down and they kept chipping away. We had a lot of good at-bats all weekend, especially with two outs. I don't know how many rockets we hit at the second baseman and some of those go a couple inches either way and the ball is in the gap."
On the upcoming weekends
"The first thing I did was pop their bubble after we hit a few home runs and bounced back from the Baylor loss. I said if you get too high right now we are going to be flatter than a pancake down the road. The season is too long and there are too many good teams. When we do go out to the leadoff classic, there will be more than one All-American type pitcher in our pool."
On the offensive effort ...
"I can't help but wonder if a couple things we have done in our vision training have not helped us. We had great at-bats in that first weekend and we had excellent balance which makes me think a couple of things we have done with our hitting drills has improved that."
On the vision training
"We have done the same thing the Olympic team has done. We marked tennis balls and you go through a progression of seeing the ball, identifying the numbers and the colors. Then you go through the same progression, but you eventually identify where you hit the ball on your bat. Our kids did seem to see the ball better in that first weekend."
On the catcher's play over the weekend
"I really like what Becky Marx does for us and Tiffany Worthy did some nice things as well. Worthy showed good leadership behind the plate, made some good calls and had great at-bats."
On Nicole Motycka's hitting
"She was on base a lot. She did not have her best weekend as a pitcher, but she was definitely a great asset at the plate. She's not going to hit like that every weekend, so it will be interesting how she deals with that, but she is seeing the ball very well."
On Samantha Findlay
"Surprisingly, as much of a free swinger as she is, she drew some walks last weekend as well. She has a really good eye and we knew about the power already."
On what she's looking for during the non-conference
"My goal is to have good at-bats and stay consistent. There are teams that start out hot and go flat, but I want to see us keeping fielding the ball well and for our pitching to continue doing what we expect it to and then we'll see where we're at."
