Everything Ashley Chastain Woodard said after South Carolina's loss to Duke

South Carolina softball head coach Ashley Chastain Woodard spoke with the media following the Gamecocks’ 6-2 loss to the Duke Blue Devils on Tuesday night at Beckham Field. It is South Carolina’s fourth consecutive loss following the weekend sweep against No. 3 Texas.

Here’s everything she had to say.

Opening Statement

“For me, short and sweet, it’s just not good enough. It wasn’t good enough on any facet, defensively, pitching, hitting, we left 10 on base… I mean, I feel like we’ve been doing that a lot lately, so not good enough for us in any facet. Inexcusable to show up and play like that, especially here in front of our fans. We’re way too good and have worked way too hard for a performance like that, and I don’t know why, you know, they can’t seem to get over the hump. But, you know, I think it’s important that I use inclusive pronouns because we’re together and it’s an us, and it’s a me, and it’s a them, and you know, try to figure it out, and we are definitely trying to figure it out. I mean, we’re at the halfway point at this point in the year, and there is a hump that we can’t seem to kind of get over. I do think this was our worst performance of the year. Even probably worse than Nebraska, and just really disappointed in the way that we showed up and played. Credit to Duke, thought they played really well, and I thought that they started the game with an intensity to get after us that we did not match. I don’t think we showed up with that intensity. So, inexcusable, very disappointed, and you know, hopefully we can turn it around tomorrow going to Coastal (Carolina), because they are a really good team too.”

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Did you ever get an explanation from the crew about the ball that went off (Alyssa Hovermale’s) foot?

“No, that’s a good question. I haven’t. Might get some feedback postgame from them on it, but in the game, we’re instructed to if we go to review, any conversation after that is an automatic ejection on my end. And so, I think just by the book, I did not want to risk that with the game how it was. It wasn’t worth it to me in the moment to really go to bat on something like that. I do think watching the review live on the video board, I thought it hit off her foot. I thought it hit off her foot live, and then (Hovermale’s) toe would also say it hit off of her, so I’m not sure what happened there, but, you know, maybe postgame I can get some information on the decision.”

That was one of the several instances where there were runners left on base, but I want to ask about (Quincee Lilio). It felt like she was in the middle of it a handful of times. Have you seen anything different in her approach? It felt like there were a lot of elevated balls in those moments where she’s usually a line-drive hitter.

“Yeah, I think we’ve been hitting a lot of deep fly balls as an offense at times when we’re trying to score runs, we’ve got runners in scoring position, big moments. I think the ball has been going in the air, and most of the time, like, really flushed out. I mean, it’s well hit, but not necessarily what we need in the moment. And Duke’s outfield is probably one of the fastest, if not the fastest, outfield that we’re going to face all year. I mean, they can really move out there. We have a big park. I mean, it’s a big park. We’ve known that. So, I think our inability to make an adjustment to try to get the ball a little bit more on plane and lower, ground balls, line drives, is what it needs to be in the moment and just hasn’t been. So yeah, I agree. I think (Lilio) is hitting the ball a little bit in the air in those situations. And that’s something, obviously, we need to focus on in our training.”

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Just going to Nealy (Lamb), can you credit that to anything, just getting hit around really early there?

“No, I really don’t have an answer or an excuse for her. I have really high expectations for Nealy. Love her to death. I have a lot of confidence in her to give her the ball a lot. Wasn’t her night, I didn’t think she pitched as well this past weekend against Texas either. I thought her command was kind of low, so, you know, just something for us to dig into, have some conversation, see if there’s anything there mentally. Physically, she looks great. The ball flight is good, it’s just not in the zone enough this weekend, and then today, I thought the first inning, it wasn’t necessarily just her. I think that they got a couple dinky hits and we miscued defensively what we were doing, and it just kind of snowballed to them scoring really early. So, we went to Jori (Heard) a lot earlier than I had wanted to. I just felt like she gave us the best chance to stay in the game, extended through the game, which she did a good job. But yeah, I would agree. I thought Nealy didn’t have her best night, but she’s proven to us (that) she can get really good teams out and be successful, so we’re going to keep giving the ball to her because we have a lot of confidence in her. We do believe in her and I think she’s going to get better as we go.”

Only one unearned run, but I think it was four errors. I think Duke had three of their own. How high is that on the priority list of getting back to work and getting it straight?

“Yeah, so high that we might practice before we go to Coastal tomorrow. I mean, we hit this morning preparing for Duke’s pitching, and so we spent a lot of time offensively this morning on just, you know, preparing for (Cassidy) Curd and the other pitchers on their staff because we weren’t sure who we were going to get. So we spent a lot of time doing that this morning. We’re on spring break, but we still have an off day, so we were off yesterday, per usual. I know a lot of them came in and got work in on their own. So, we gathered up and prepared for Duke this morning. And, I mean, we’ve been pretty good defensively most of the year. I think this is probably our worst performance, or matching our worst performance, on the year. We definitely probably need to throw the ball around and take some ground balls before we go to Conway tomorrow, because we need to be a lot better on that side. We just need to pitch and play defense better to give us a chance to win, you know, as this offense works through the bumps and bruises and humps that we can’t seem to get over.”

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