Transcript
With us on coach's corner, KWBG, going to talk some madward baseball today. Bryce Dean joining us as the Tigers had a postseason coming to an end. Boy, a heck of a came against Ankeny Christian, which we will get to in just a few. But coach, we want to start off with Collins-Maxwell. And believe it or not, the last time we talked, you were getting ready to play Collins-Maxwell. And boy, just an outstanding effort. I look at a couple of things. One, cold depth. He really had just a monstrous night, I thought, for you at the plate. I know one RBI in three hits. And you're like, OK, how big of a night is that? But I'm talking a couple of runs scored. He was on base how many times as well. That Deppie had a huge night. But Levi Cochlear, if we don't lead off with him, he's going to find me in the offseason and probably yell at me. What a performance, Bryce. Just give me some thoughts on Levi. And if it takes the whole interview, that's fair enough. Because I heard he was dealing that night. Yeah, that was kind of him all year. I learned my lesson early on with him when I pulled him going into the seventh inning of the game against Ogden at home this year. And after that game, it made me look dumb, because we ended up losing that game. And after that, any time that he had pitches left and he was rolling to the seventh inning, we just let him go. Yeah, he commanded that whole game. Even in the self-induced, high-pressure situations, like the one I think of is they load the bases with no outs and a 4-0 ball game. I can't remember his fourth or fifth inning. He gets a fly ball to left field if Mason throws it on a line rather than trying to get some air under it. Runners out at home. But no, we got out of that with one run allowed. His pitch count, he kept his pitch count low the whole night so that when he did run into situations, he was able to work through it. And I walked out there two outs in the sixth just so we could cross-check pitch count with Collins-Maxwell and make sure that we were going to run into any issues with that. And he thought I was coming to take him out. And before I even said anything, I got out of there. He goes, let me finish. And I was like, I had full intention to let you finish this game. I'm just making sure that your pitch counts. I'm just checking. I'm just checking. It's below one dead. But yeah, no, that kid's a workhorse for us this year. You look at 45 innings. The ERA doesn't tell the whole story with him. Because it's a 2-9-6. It probably could have been lower than that with how he started the year versus how he finished the year. And it's really nice going into that Collins game knowing that we don't have to roll Emerson out there. And right now, going into next year, you've got Levi and Emerson, 1A, 1B, you know that they can both go out, give you seven innings, any given night. And that's something that I can't say that I've had before. So all the props in the world to Levi. As the kids say, he shoved that night. Yeah, just threw a lot of strikes. And he had seven strikeouts. But he let our defense work for him. We played great behind them, too. Yeah, he really did that night defensively. So we moved to Ankeny Christian now. Going in, we knew this was going to be a battle. My question wasn't going to be what kind of a game are we looking at. My question was, when these two get together, what is Ankeny Christian seeing this year? And everything that Matt would see, is that going to help? And I got to tell you what, both answers were yeah. Everything that you have seen this year prepared you for that game. Coach, they come out, grabbed three runs in the bottom of the first. And that could have been like lights out. I mean, it could have been real trouble for you guys. You come back with three, though, in the top of the second inning. I know they answered in the bottom of the second. But in my opinion, that was proof that, hey, you're not going to leave here in four or five innings tonight. You're going to have to play a Sol 7. Yeah, I think one of the things that it wasn't just the coaches saying it, but the kids believed it all year, was with the nine that we have in the lineup, I mean, they give us a shot every single time that they're out there. So we get down three nothing right away, but we got a couple runners on the top of the first. And our kids were like, we can hit this guy. And I told them after that bottom of the second where they put up a four spot on us to go up seven to three, I was like, guys, we're not done scoring. They're not done scoring. I was like, we're going to have to keep going offensively. Unfortunately, we didn't scratch across any more runs till that seventh inning. But I think I saw in our stats, we left 12 runners on. In a game, we lose by one. And after the game, there was a lot of complaining about umpiring and stuff from the kids. And what I was told was like, guys, when you have the bases loaded with one out, you can't strike out ground out and expect to win games. So I preached all your control what? Control the controllables and anything that's out of your control is like, we can't complain about that. And the stuff that we didn't do, whether it was throwing strikes defensively, made four, four or five errors. Some plays that didn't get made that probably should have been made offensively, being the guy that drives in runs with runners in scoring position. But no, yeah, it seems like, and I think I said this two weeks ago, it seems like any time us and Anthony Christian get together, it's going to be a one to two run ball game. Based off the last seven or eight years playing against them. And you know, we came up one run short. But if we play that situation 10 times with Emerson as a tying run on second base, and Colby Owens up to bat with two outs in the seventh, 10 times out of 10, I'm going to put my money on Colby Owens to come through and get a hit. He just didn't come through that one time. And that's baseball. Well, and you guys were just fantastic at the plate that night. And I know I'm not telling you anything you don't know. But I mean, you forced 11 walks that night. You had two kids reach via an error. You had one kid get hit as well. I know only five hits, but I'm always a guy that looks at other stuff too, Bryce. And you know that as well as we've known each other these years. I want to know everything. Give me the whole body of work. And I really thought, if there was a game that Ankeny Christian looks back, and I know they're going to be at the state tournament obviously next week in Carroll, if there's a game that looks back that had to be one that they probably left the parking lot that night with a, it had to be you guys. That was a heck of a ball game, Bryce. Yeah, we went into it knowing we had to be patient with their pitching. I don't know. No discredit to them, because I know I talk to their coach about it. But their schedule is what their schedule is. And their pitchers numbers look really, really good on paper. When we get out there, they're probably mid-70s when, and you look at our schedule, and we, our last game for postseason was Pleasantville. And I don't think they had anybody throwing under 85. So our guys were patient at the plate. I gave a lot of credit to the bottom of our lineup. Our two postseason games, because I don't have it in front of me, but between our six through nine guys, I bet, in two games, they got on nine or 10 times. And that, I explained to them how big that is. When you can roll back over to Cole Deppi, McCoy, Emerson, Colby, and yeah, it really was one through nine was finding ways to get on. I just couldn't find that one, that one timely hit until Emerson hit his double in the seventh inning, but a little too late at that point. Made it very interesting, though. That's for sure that night. Yeah. Bryce, we'll wrap up the season with you. Talk to him all conference. Maybe throw some district stuff out there, all the good things. And look ahead to next year, because it's pretty easy to figure out who's coming back next year. The word, I believe, is everyone. But thanks for some time today, coach. And we'll wrap her up here in a couple of weeks with you. Awesome. Thanks, Ryan. Appreciate you. You bet. Bryce Dean again joining us. Matt from Baseball here on Coaches Corner.
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