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June 7, 2009

Post-Game Quotes: Game 2 of NCAA Baseball Austin Super Regional
TCU 3, Texas 2
Sunday, June 7 o UFCU Disch-Falk Field

TCU
Head Coach Jim Schlossnagle
Opening statement: I'm certainly very proud of our team. That was a great college baseball game by two great outstanding clubs. Two really good pitchers, we were just fortunate enough that Paul kept the ball down enough and the very few balls that Green gave us to hit, Vern and Carp ran into. I'm very proud of our team and they're certainly a classy bunch on the other side that played hard throughout the entire game as well.

On Paul Gerrish's performance: We've gotten better with time certainly. Kyle was okay yesterday, and maybe I have a quick trigger, but Paul was certainly outstanding and has been. He has been our most consistent guy this season. Tyler Lockwood will throw for us tomorrow and will hopefully do the same thing.

On Texas' small-ball offense: In my opinion, they're an underrated offensive club. When they get the leadoff hitter on base, it's a feeding frenzy. They get the bunt down and then they get the hit in clutch situations. They kind of build off that throughout the course of an entire inning and then all of sudden you run into a three-run homer. It's really big in the whole grand scheme of what they're trying to do when they get the leadoff hitter on.

On hitting two home runs today: We do not live and die by the homer. We play a lot closer to Texas brand of baseball and a lot of it was that Texas wouldn't let us do that. We weren't getting a lot of leadoff hitters on. That is Texas, they weren't giving us base runners and they haven't really walked guys these past two days. We tried one hit-and-run today and if we can get some guys on, you will see us do some things.

On Tyler Lockwood: He started as a freshman for us. He pitched in long relief last year and was very effective for us. This year he started out in the rotation, didn't do so well, we put him back in long relief earlier this season, which I think will be his thing in pro ball, and he's basically been a spot starter for us. We asked him to start the Sunday game at San Diego State and he was lights out. We asked him to start against Oregon State in the Regional final last week and he was very good. He's a strike thrower, he'll give us a great chance to play defense because he usually doesn't beat himself with walks.

Junior P Paul Gerrish
On silencing the Texas' bats: Coach talked yesterday that the most important thing was getting ahead of the count because they were getting really good swings off us. So that is what I was trying to do today. I wanted to get strike one and then I could make my pitches and try to get them to swing at them rather then serve up fastballs down the middle and let them get their good swings off like they did yesterday.

On pitching seven innings: I was starting to get tired a little bit at that point. I haven't really gone that deep this season so I was trying to get good pitches on the corners and hope that they would put it in play. It was one of those things you have to work through and hope that they make a mistake like they did that one time they popped up to bunt. I was just trying to make good pitches.

Senior 1B Matt Vern
On hitting a home run today: We don't hit home runs every game. You can't go and try to hit home runs because those only come off mistakes. [Cole Green] made a few mistakes today. He pitched pretty well today. The few mistakes he did make we were able to get on them and hit them out of the ballpark.

Senior 3B Matt Carpenter
On forcing a third game: The ultimate goal is to get a chance to go to Omaha, but it sounds cliché, but we're going to play the game one pitch at a time and do our own thing. Whatever happens tomorrow happens, and hopefully it'll end with our guys celebrating.

On feeling any pressure going into tomorrow games: It's tough to say about Texas because I'm not in their clubhouse, but we're not feeling the pressure. We're out there relaxed, we just won game two and we're taking that momentum into game three. We're confident.

Texas
Head Coach Augie Garrido
Opening statement: I think the story at least from our point of view was the quality of the pitcher they put out on the mound today. He was awesome. In the first six innings, we didn't have a runner past first base. He didn't walk a guy in the entire game. He didn't hit a guy. He didn't put anybody on. They made one error and then they quickly erased that with a defensive play. They played a superb game. They really played well. They pitched extremely well at a very high level. It was a lot like the game [A.J.] Morris pitched against us early in the year, where he just hit his spot over and over again, had good velocity on his fastball, used his breaking ball when he was behind in the count and dominated the game. That's what good pitching does. Cole Green pitched very well. He did a good job, good enough to win. He gave us our chance to win. We just didn't handle the offense to get enough runs for him. Their three stood up on the two home runs that they hit.

On today's game: I thought the approach was fine. I didn't get a feeling that they were out of control or over trying or uptight. I had the feeling that he came out with the first two pitches and might as well have said, "Here we go, man. This is what I'm going to do all day." He barried those first two fast balls to get the game going and he did it the whole game. He never lost command. It's always hard when you get into these situations. Did you fail or did they succeed at a high level. I think they succeeded at a high level.

Junior 1B Brandon Belt On TCU's pitching performance: He kept giving me the same pitch over and over again and I just couldn't hit it. Maybe I was trying too hard. That's a possibility. But I'm confident in my abilities and I'm confident in my team's ability so I think coming back tomorrow we'll be okay. We just have to reset and forget about this today.

Senior DH Preston Clark
On TCU's pitching: I thought he did an outstanding job, located the ball, kept the ball down. He mainly pitched off his fastball. That's how he got ahead in the counts. Later on in the game, you started to get a feel for his sliders but he mixed it up quite a bit so we didn't get to sit on that fastball as much as we wanted to. When we had our chance to drive the ball, we didn't. It's just one of those days in baseball that happens. That's why we have a three game series. We have another chance to come out and do it tomorrow.

On trying to grab momentum: We started to. When we got an RBI the first time, Brandon [Belt] got it and we had a chance to grab the momentum. They pitched out of the battle. It's hard to keep coming from behind and getting the momentum. We've done that all year so it's nothing new to us. It just didn't fall for us.

I think we'll be fine. Coming into the locker room today, we didn't have any pressure on us. Everybody's relaxed. We felt good, real loose. Everybody's laughing and joking in the locker room. You have to tip your hat to that guy. He pitched well today. We didn't really do anything wrong. He just went out there and had an outstanding performance. We're not going to look at it as an elimination game tomorrow. We have to go out and play ball. If we play loose and relaxed, we're going to win games. It's just how we play ball so we just have to go out there and do that.

Sophomore RHP Cole Green
On TCU's offense: They're obviously great hitters. I knew that going into the game. Just a couple of balls I left up, small mistakes that I make that most of the time people don't capitalize on those and they happened to those two times. I have to give credit to them.