March 24, 2007
Recap | Box Score
Head Coach Steve Smith:
On leaving Cassavechia in to pitch through the 10th inning:
"I thought he was laboring a little bit. His pitch count wasn't enormously high. It was high for him, but I wanted to try to keep it a one-run game if we could. They didn't hit him well; but they got some seeing-eye stuff, and they did what they needed to do. They were pretty tenacious at the plate. We're going to have to get more than just one inning out of him. If we win this game tonight, we're winning it because of him. He pitched plenty well enough to win, and he should've won the game without having to go back out there for another inning. It didn't happen, but if we don't have him we're not in the game."
On losing a game like this:
"It was a one-run difference in the game, and one team is frustrated while the other one feels great. That's how different it is. Both teams competed really hard. I thought they did a great job, but I didn't think that we did a bad job. I can second-guess a bunch of decisions and no decisions, too, but that's just the way the game is."
On losing on a balk:
"They got a guy to third base. There's more ways to score from third than there is anywhere else. It was possible it could happen, and it did. The sun's going to come up tomorrow, and we're going to come back out here and play again."
Baylor senior catcher Matt Sodolak:
On the loss:
"It was a tough loss. The lead changed a couple times, and they caught a break or two. We just weren't able to catch the same one they did."
On stranding runners in scoring position:
"When we get runners in scoring position we need to battle our best and try to get them in; you never know which one is going to be the winning run. You never know how many you're going to need until the last out is made. It's part of the game, and tomorrow might be a different story. We've just got to take it one pitch at a time and come out ready to play tomorrow."
Baylor junior relief pitcher Nick Cassavechia:
On the balk that scored the decisive run:
"I didn't step off with my right foot, nor did I come set, so that's considered a balk."
On losing a game on a balk:
"That's a first. It's not normally how you want it to happen. I'd rather they just put it in play and lose it like that. It hits me hard when it's a mental mistake like that, something you can control."
On how he felt when the bases were loaded in the top of the 10th:
"All weekend they've showed a lot of trouble hitting the slider. The slider's been working for me recently, and I was going to attack with it the whole time. If they were going to get a hit it was going to be on a good pitch. I wish it could've gone that way instead of something like (what happened)."
On his performance:
"There wasn't one pitch that I threw that I regret or anything like that. They were hitting pitches that I thought I threw in the right zone. They did a great job of competing. The pitches that they put in play were pitches that I executed. It's frustrating because I gave up some runs, got the loss and couldn't help us win, but I felt like I did my job of throwing the pitches where I wanted."
