South Carolina 7, UCLA 1 - Postgame Quotes
June 28, 2010 | Baseball
June 28, 2010
Recap |
Box Score |
Photo Gallery 
UCLA head coach John Savage
opening remarks
Well, it was clearly South Carolina's night. It just seemed like we got off to a rough start. Two outs in the 1st inning. They touched the ball a couple of times. And I thought their hitters did a terrific job off of Gerrit of touching the ball. And they got rewarded. I think he had two strikeouts in seven innings, which is probably a season low. I thought Blake Cooper was outstanding, off three days' rest. Gotta' give him a ton of credit. He pounded the strike zone. Threw his change and breaking ball for strikes, and really kept us off balance all evening. You know, so it was clearly their night from the get go. They deserve to win the game. They dominated us in every phase, really. So it's one game. And it's the best two out of three, and, you know, we have bounced back - we have bounced back all season, and this is a team of being very resilient. And we'll get back after it tomorrow. But tonight they had our number, and you gotta' give them a ton of credit.
right-hander Gerrit Cole
on his pitching performance
Well, you know, they had a great approach. I don't know what the approach was. Whatever it was, it worked. You know, they touched the ball with two strikes. You know, constantly worked counts, foul balls off. I jumped ahead of a lot of batters. Had a lot of guys 0 1 and 1 2. And, you know, they touched the ball. They didn't chase the fastball up. They just did a very good job. A night like tonight with a line like this, I mean, sometimes you gotta kind of beat yourself up about it, but they did a great job. I mean, I don't have really anything else.
catcher Steve Rodriguez
on South Carolina right-hander Blake Cooper
Well, Cooper, he mixed it up well tonight and kept us off balance. We didn't make enough adjustments at the plate, obviously, with only three hits. And then Gerrit - Gerrit pitched very effective, I thought. He had good stuff tonight. South Carolina battled all night, put the ball in play, and it's tough for them - we didn't get many to fall for us. I think that's what killed us tonight.
head coach John Savage
on getting out-hit 14 to three, including 10 to nothing early in the game
Yeah, I mean, you don't look at the hit column. I mean, it's a run game. But, when [they] have ten hits, you don't have any hits. That goes to show you they certainly are doing a much better job. It's pretty clear on the scoreboard. But, hey, it could be 2 to 1 and we could be sitting up here, you know, at 7 to 1 and they had 14 hits and we had three hits. And they're up a game, and Game 2 is tomorrow night. So, like I said, it was their night. You gotta' give them a ton of credit. And that's when I look at the game, when we get back at the hotel we've got to look toward tomorrow.
on having been in this situation during the NCAA Super Regionals
I think all season can. I don't know how many series we lost. I think we lost two series all year. I don't think there's many teams in the country that can say that, probably the ones except that are here. So, you know, we've been in this position before. And we have bounced back, and it's all about tomorrow for us. You lose Game 1, anybody would have the momentum up 1 0. That's baseball. That's the way it is. That's how series work. They're certainly up a game, and it's their advantage right now, but, you know, that's why we're playing tomorrow.
on Tuesday's projected starting pitcher
It won't be [Trevor] Bauer. Looks like it will be [Rob] Rasmussen. We're going to announce that. I'll get back to my staff. We'll announce it tonight. It won't be Bauer.
on Cody Regis' error at second base in the first inning
It's one play - Regis has played really well all week. I mean, guys make errors all the time. The ball kicked off his glove. Kind of a funny hop, but, hey, we're here because of a lot of reasons. And to say that tonight was a night we missed [Tyler] Rahmatulla, I think that's not the right way to look at it. So we didn't play well in all phases. I told the team this after the game. It wasn't our pitching. It wasn't our defense. It wasn't our offense. It was everybody. But on the other hand of that, you've got to give South Carolina a ton of credit. They had a lot to do with that. They fought this guy pretty good. This guy [Gerrit Cole] hasn't been touched like that all year. So they had a good plan, and they executed their plan and we didn't.
catcher Steve Rodriguez
on UCLA's reaction to trailing early in the game
They threw a couple of good punches, and we didn't feel like it was going to steamroll like it did. We just wanted to put a couple or a few quality at bats together. We figured if we put in a few more quality at bats we'd be right in the game. And Cooper was on his game tonight, and he didn't allow us to do that. So that's when things started to steamroll a little bit. But we never felt we were totally out of it. Even that last inning. Bases loaded, nobody out, we were a couple hits away from getting right back into it and putting a little more pressure on to them.
