OSU-UNLV Post-Game Quotes
OREGON STATE HEAD COACH PAT CASEY
Opening statement …
“Well, we scored some runs and Ben (Wetzler) was outstanding.”
On if Michael Conforto’s base hit got the team going…
“It tells you what he means to our club because he got everyone excited, including the people in our dugout. Hopefully it took a little pressure off of him because I know he’s just been fighting this thing. It’s baseball.”
On how he will approach this evening’s game…
“I think we’re going to go with (Scott) Schultz. We’ll start Schultz and we have one other option and that’s (Jake) Thompson. So we got two shots…but we didn’t want to talk about it. We knew we wanted to go with one of those two so that we could protect them a little bit. If we needed Schultz we would have used him, understanding that we needed to win.”
On how long he can extend Schultz in a game…
“He threw a complete game against Indiana early in the year. I think it was a 1-0 shutout. He’s capable of going about 85 pitches probably. He’s a pretty durable guy. He went four and a third against Stanford and I think he threw 75 pitches so when you lose a game in a tournament like this, you put yourself behind the eight ball.”
On how it felt to score a good amount of runs in a single game…
“Well, about as good as it felt to the four thousand people at the game today. Exactly like that. I’m just a little closer to the heat so I get burned a little bit more. The thing that happens when you don’t score runs is the pitcher feels good. You could see their guy out there looking at those guys saying, ‘they’re struggling’ so I’m just going to go in, out, breaking ball, and changeup. The batting average against him was .196 so I thought he was pretty good. We got him into some pitch counts and we took some pretty good passes.”
On Conforto’s emotions after his hit…
“He felt just like the four thousand fans. I felt like he was walking around feeling like if he didn’t get a hit, we weren’t going anywhere. I think that weighs on a kid. The thing that people don’t understand is that these kids aren’t thinking about the draft. I mean he’s going to be a first rounder so it’s not that at all as much as it is the pressure of letting his teammates down. It’s tough sometimes when you’re young and you’re not hitting.”
OREGON STATE STARTING PITCHER BEN WETZLER
On what today meant to him…
“It’s another game. It’s do or die at this point. We have to show up again. Somebody came into our yard last night and took it to us and we get a chance to respond. That’s the beautiful thing about baseball. We get another chance and we better respond.”
On if he had a message for his teammates last night…
“No. Mike(Conforto) sent us all a text last night reminding us who we are. Last night, we weren’t ourselves and we didn’t play anywhere near Beaver baseball and it was pathetic to be quite frank. We showed up today and guys swung the bat. We didn’t have as many hits as we would’ve liked, but guys were putting good swings on the balls and they finally started to fall there in that inning and it was huge.”
On what it took to get out of the sixth inning jam…
“Throwing strikes. I led off with two back-to-back walks and that’s always going to get you into trouble. I just threw strikes, got a double play ball, and got out of it…it was huge.”
On the reaction of the crowd when he came out for the ninth inning…
“It was special. Hopefully, it will be more special if we can get past tonight and go play for tomorrow.”
UNLV HEAD COACH TIM CHAMBERS
Opening Statement…
“It was a whale of ball game for five full. They got it going and we made a few mistakes in the fifth. We had an opportunity to get right back into the game in the bottom half with the bases loaded and nobody and we got a strike out. I felt that the ball bounced, but so be it and then Edgar (Montero) hit a pretty hard shot to the shortstop and he made a good play, double play out of the inning and that was the ball game right there. I’m proud of our guys, as a number of teams that went 0 and 2 around the county and we weren’t one of them so I’m proud of our guys.”
On being a long shot coming in with a lot of injuries…
“We never look at it as a long shot. We feel that our pitching staff is pretty good and can keep us in games. That was the case today. (Oregon State) hit the ball real well. I was almost like when (Michael) Conforto got the hit, it woke the offense up and we did make a couple of mistakes in that inning, but they banged a couple balls hard. Joey (Swanner) had a bad angle on the ball in the outfield that got to the wall and that opened up the flood gates a little bit. You have to take advantage of your opportunities too and we had a shot in the bottom half and did not get it done.”
On hitting .150 coming into the Regional and injuries offensively…
“You can’t blame that, but our lineup was jacked up and a mess. You try and flip it around and are facing one of the top left-handers in the country (OSU’s Ben Wetzler) and all that you have to put in the game is left-handers in some spots. Our lineup was not even close to what it was, but I will not make excuses that that is why we lost. A lot of broken bones and casts that need to be put on guys when we get back home. The lineup was tough and that guy (Wetzler) is extremely tough on left-handers and the righties as well, but more on the left-handers. He is a whale of a pitcher.”
UNLV FIRST BASEMAN PATRICK ARMSTRONG
On what makes OSU’s Ben Wetzler so good...
“He can throw any pitch at any count, he is a hard left hander. I don’t really know, he is just a great pitcher, he puts it wherever he wants pretty much.”
On getting hits was due to mental blocks…
“We’re not a team that really presses that much. Last night, we were saying that we were saving all the hits for today, but I mean that wasn’t the case, its baseball. Joey (Armstrong) is out, one of our best hitters. We were cold and unfortunately it was the end of the year.”
UNLV STARTING PITCHER KENNY OAKLEY
On what this season meant for him and the team…
“I mean, it’s pretty cool, in our clubhouse we have an All-American wall with people who have been All-Americans, you look at it and you talk about ten years ago like ‘03-05 when this team was really booming, we were competing with the best teams in the country. To put together a team that plays just as well as them, it’s kind of cool. I mean last year one of our coaches had an opportunity to do this and he was telling us that we were good enough to do this too. I guess it’s cool to just realize that we really had enough and to realize that we probably had enough to go a little farther, if things would have gone our way a few more times.”
On if he felt worn down by the 6th inning …
“Oh, no I feel that every game I could throw 250 pitches. I don’t notice my body getting tired or any of that, the day after maybe I will feel a little sore, but in the heat of the game I don’t feel anything. I fell that I’m full go always all the time.”
