Mervyl Melendez Quotations

When you've got a Division I rival this close, you want to beat them, and unfortunately we haven't been able to do that much. But I wasn't too displeased with this game because it was a good game. Both starting pitchers did very well, and we killed ourselves with a couple of key errors. We don't make those errors and it's a 0-0 game.

We faced some good pitching in this game, and that's what we needed going into the rest of the season. We'll bounce back. We'll be alright.

We lost the conference last year; we didn't deserve to win. There are some teams that think they've caught up to us. It's up to us to show them that they haven't.

It could be a long season if we have something unfortunate happen to one of those guys. Or if one of them decides to do something stupid. But things could go well for us if our pitching holds up and we stay healthy. The bottom line is we have a good pitching staff.

I think we killed ourselves defensively. We can't make four errors and expect to win a Division I baseball game. That can't happen. Routine plays have to be made. We've put a lot of emphasis on defense and this just can't happen.

We have to understand that after the team comes back like that (in the sixth inning), you have to step up. You can't just give the momentum back to UCF. We scored three runs and then we gave (the lead) right back to them. We have to keep the momentum and see if we can score some runs after that.

It was a domino effect. I'd say the program that we had established here through hard work, pride, trust, loyalty -- those things just went south. We had some guys on the team that were cancers and some others followed them. We had guys who didn't want to be here.

I'm not happy at all with this performance.

Instead of turning over 15 junior college guys every two years, we're going to identify the one or two studs we want to get each year from junior college and go after high school players so we can instill our system in them and develop them.

I promised the other coaches we'd go out and get players who were going to give us a chance to win and not cause problems. We have worked harder than ever as coaches to get this team together, and I think the future looks pretty bright.

I don't know if I can take these games. But as long as we get out of these jams, I'll be all right.