I've coached too many games against Rutgers to know they were not going to quit on us. |
I've never seen a guy more thorough and organized. He was really serious about developing as a coach and progressing in the profession. |
If we play our game - pitch as well as we can and play good defense - do the things that we do, then I think we can compete with South Florida and have some good results this weekend. |
If you win the regular season championship, it gives you an inside track to a NCAA bid. |
It sure is a lot more fun to win than lose. I'm sure the players are aware that we've won several games in a row and I'm all for thinking about it, but you can't rest on your laurels. Just because you won the last game doesn't mean you'll win the next one. |
Kansas State is one of the best teams in the country. [Chicago State] could be a very tough game. |
Lopez is a little sore and we want to rest him a little bit. I always felt that [Barnes] was a starting player and had the capability to be one of our best hitters and all-around players. The problem is that we had a full starting infield coming back and they're all good players. |
Our planned rotation worked exactly as planned. |
Stewart did a fantastic job on what was an offensive day. Thornton has been so dependable for us. He's allowed one poor start. |
That was a tough decision, but I think I would have done the same thing. |
There's something special about that kid. |
There've been a lot of close games in this [winning] streak. We've had some late game heroics. It gives the guys a greater amount of confidence that they can do what it takes to win. |
This is obviously a huge series for us. You need to take care of business at home in our conference because the road games are just such tough games to win. |
This shows we could be a good offensive team; I hope this carries over for the rest of the week. Scoring early is important for this team because we are not a home-run hitting team and we don't have an enormous amount of power in the lineup. |
We don't need any incentive when we play Rutgers. They've been our big rival since we've been in the Big East. We both entered the conference in the same year, and we've been pretty consistently the top two teams in the league ever since. |