Postgame Quotes
3/15/2008 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
March 15, 2008
Baylor head coach Steve Smith:
On what he saw from Shawn Tolleson:
"What we saw was a lot of composure and a guy who just kept competing, and (he) was a real battler all the way to the end. He had really good stuff at the beginning, and he came out with his guns loaded. That's been his struggle the first few times out - he's been giving up runs in the first inning of the game. Tonight he came out and was really sharp, and he got the strikeouts to start the game."
On Beamer Weems' play:
"Beamer makes a lot of plays look really easy that are not that easy. Obviously that play had a high degree of difficulty. The thing that's impressive is that he's not letting his offensive game go onto the field with him; he's playing defense. What I realize, and what the rest of our club realizes, is that a lot of the plays that he's making are just like RBIs. There's a lot of ways you help your team win games, and he's helping us win it with his glove right now."
On Oklahoma State's team:
"They're a sound defensive team. We've seen two really good left-handed starters. I didn't know a lot about them because they lost so many players off of last year's team that you really don't have a good sense of how they stack up. They're going to be right in the hunt in the league because of the balance that they have up and down the lineup, and the defense that they play."
On Landis Ware's play:
"He's a pretty timely hitter. Landis has done such a good job to this point in the season that I'm playing Raynor Campbell in center field for the first time in his life. That's what that really boils down to. That's an unexpected development. I would not have expected that to be the case. I would've expected that when Raynor was cleared to play he would probably go back to second base and we'd pick up from there, but Landis has done such a good job both offensively and defensively, that we had to start looking.
On Raynor Campbell starting in center field:
"Raynor can play a lot of places, but he's never played center field. We shot him balls out of a machine for two days, but that's about the extent of it. He's going to have to play his way into shape, and he's going to struggle to do it because there are no intrasquad games to play, and there's really no way to do it except to throw him out there. I wrestled with that decision a little bit, but I still think we're just going to have to go with it and eventually he'll come around."
Baylor freshman RHP Shawn Tolleson:
On his performance tonight:
"I had most of my pitches working tonight, and I felt pretty comfortable. Our defense showed me that they could play with the best of them, so I was just throwing it in there and letting them do the work."
On what he can improve upon:
"You can walk away from any start and find a lot of things to improve upon, so hopefully I can get better from here."
On getting a ground ball double play to escape a bases-loaded jam in the third inning:
"I didn't think I was going to get a strikeout right there against a pretty good hitter. I was just focusing on keeping the ball down and hopefully getting a ground ball."
On pitching his best game of the season:
"With each start I get a little more comfortable out there, and I'm finally getting a little more used to pitching to college hitters and figuring out what I need to do."
Baylor freshman 2B Landis Ware:
On getting his third RBI of the game to give Baylor an insurance run in the eighth:
"You never want to let up. You never want to coast in any game, and as we saw in the game last night, the guys over there can come back in a hurry. You always want more runs whenever you can get them, so the extra run helped. Shawn (Tolleson) did the rest."
On the team getting their first Big 12 win of the season:
"It sets the tone for the rest of the year. If we had come out here and lost two games, it kind of puts a negative tone on (the season). Obviously it's early, and anything can happen as of now, but to get the first win in conference is great."
