March 27, 2009

Recap | Box Score

Coach Steve Smith

On Kansas State pitcher A.J. Morris

"I thought he pitched very well. He pitched up to advertised. He located the fastball. I think he has got some deception. I don't think the hitters pick him up real good. Although, I thought we had some pretty good at-bats. He pitched to the elements good. There were some balls that were pretty well struck tonight. He did a good job of just coming at us and the balls we hit well we hit right in the teeth of that wind, but he pitched very well."

On Kendal Volz's struggles

"I thought the game was more about us defensively then him struggling. He wasn't perfect, but when you are having to get four and five outs an inning it is not what you need to do. I thought defensively this was not one of our better games."

Senior Ben Booker

On Kansas State pitcher A.J. Morris

"He filled up the zone pretty good with all of his pitches. Mostly fastball, slider, but he always got ahead in the count."

On the outcome of the game

"I think more than anything we came out sluggish today. We did not look good the whole game defensively. Kendal (Volz) threw well. We didn't make any plays behind him. I feel sorry about him, he was competing his butt off. We didn't hit. We just let him down. We were trying. I guess we are trying too hard. We just got to have fun. We shouldn't let the weather affect us like this. It's baseball, go out there and have fun. It didn't look like we had any fun tonight all around. Just real sluggish."

On stealing a lot of bases

"We had to try to make something happen. We had to get to second base, so a hit will score us. We got a runner on first, we are going to try to get to second. That's the most stolen bases we had in a while in a game. That shows we can run a little bit, so we got to start putting pressure on them cause that is what they do. They put pressure on us. I thought (Gregg) Glime did a pretty good job throwing their guys out. We just got to come out and play. We just got to be a different ball club tomorrow. That is the good thing about baseball: you play these guys two more times, so you can still win the series."

Junior Kendal Volz

On his pitching performance

"I felt good at times. I kind of struggled to throw it where I wanted it, but I thought I threw strikes well. It's unfortunately where the ball fell and we didn't really show up defensively, that's the way it goes sometimes. Our guys will bounce back tomorrow and it's another day tomorrow. You have to, especially in this conference. We got to win tomorrow, then use that to help us win on Sunday."

On expecting a pitchers' duel tonight

"We knew he (A.J. Morris) had good numbers. Our hitters have faced some of the best guys, so I really thought we hit the ball good sometimes just right at guys and the wind knocked it down. That is just the way the game went today and you can't hang your head on that if you are a hitter, just come back tomorrow."

On having better stuff tonight then last week

"Yeah, I felt a lot better this week than last week, so unfortunately things did not fall the way I thought they were. I just got to keep working and get ready for next week."

On the pressure of dealing with Kansas State base runners

"It doesn't change much. It just changes up holding guys on and picking them off, but they were like that last year and there are other teams like that. It's just a little bit different timing on the mound holding the ball."

On what pitches he was throwing tonight

"Filling it with fastballs and throwing a lot of sliders too. Really not trying to be too perfect: let them hit the ball and the wind is going to knock it down. I know we had a couple tough breaks, guys didn't see the ball. It seemed like little hits in the infield didn't go our way. You got to fill up the zone on a night like tonight and I thought I filled it up pretty well and battled under the circumstances."