TCU 6, UCLA 2 - Postgame Quotes
June 25, 2010
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UCLA head coach John Savage
opening statement
"It's just one of those days. You gotta' give Matt Purke and TCU a ton of credit. I thought he did an outstanding job of pounding the zone, throwing strikes. You know, there wasn't a whole lot of strikeouts, but he did his job. And it seemed like we were hitting the ball on the ground. We had a ton of groundball outs, and you've got to give [Tyler] Lockwood a ton of credit as well. He came out and threw the ball extremely well. Just seemed like we were swimming upstream all day defensively [and] a little bit on the mound, offensively. But that can't happen, we know, at this stage. And we live another day, and we need to kind of make sure that this one - that there's no residue tomorrow. We'll go with [Trevor] Bauer tomorrow. And it's a new ball game tomorrow, and we feel very, very confident about our team. And we had a misstep, and I think you gotta' give a lot of credit to TCU. We'll get back after it and play Bruin baseball tomorrow."
left-handed pitcher Rob Rasmussen
on his pitching performance
"Quite honestly, I just didn't throw enough strikes. Obviously, those two walks in the first inning hurt. Like Coach said, we were kind of swimming upstream. From that point on, I didn't feel like I had it, but just tried to keep our team in the game as much as possible and just hope that there would be enough for a win. Like Coach said, you've got to give Matt Purke a lot of credit. He pitched an unbelievable game. And unfortunately, it didn't happen for us today."
head coach John Savage
on UCLA's defensive play
"I actually thought Rob did fine. He had some tough luck. And there were not a whole lot of errors on the board. We made one error, but there was a bunch of plays we should have made. Certainly in the first inning, I think there was a ground ball. There was a popup that was foul. And then we walked a guy. And it just seemed like we just couldn't finish innings defensively And I think Rob kind of found it a little bit and deserved much better, to be quite honest with you. He walked three guys in four and a third, which is uncharacteristic. Like I said, we didn't play Bruin baseball. And he didn't make some pitches that led to him not making some pitches, and then what good teams do is they pecked away, they got a one, a one, a one in the forth and two big swings late in the game. So, it just wasn't our day."
shortstop Niko Gallego
on the wind conditions during the game
"Yeah, the wind was blowing pretty good. But I mean, TCU had to deal with the same wind as we did. And we know that we should have handled it better. To answer your question, I don't know how many times we've played in the wind, but I know we've had wind and we've had other conditions. That's no excuse to play the way we did with those fly balls."
head coach John Savage
on UCLA's pitching depth in the College World Series
"We feel like we're in good shape. We'll go [with Trevor] Bauer tomorrow. We've got [Erik] Goeddel. We've got [Matt] Grace, and we've got [Gerrit] Cole. We've got [Dan] Klein. I think we're in very good position. After tomorrow, there's a day off. So you have to look to the next step, certainly. But it's all about one game now. And we have plenty of arms that are very, very capable of doing what we need to do. Bauer has his - I think one day short of a normal week, which is real good. Gerrit certainly will be ready to go - Gerrit Cole - and you've got Grace and Goeddel and Klein. We feel very comfortable where we're at. It was a team loss. I don't think it had - you can't look at Rasmussen and Claypool and say that's why we lost. I don't think you're saying that. But I just think it was just not a well played game all the way around for us. Therefore, you lose 6-2."
left-hander Rob Rasmussen
on Beau Amaral's catch in the first inning and several defensive miscues
"Beau's play was unbelievable obviously, just to keep that to a one [run] at that time in the game was huge for us. You can talk about plays that should have been made, but from my standpoint you can also talk about the walks I had. You forget about those plays and don't walk those guys, those runs don't score. So it's a double edged sword, and something that I never looked at, because I was still in a position to get a guy out with no runs having been scored. So, yeah, it's something there. But we're big on our team on picking people up, whether it's at bats or defensively or Beau picked me up. He made an unbelievable catch. It's something that I do think that I should have done to pick someone else up."
shortstop Niko Gallego
on TCU left-hander Matt Purke's pitching performance
"I don't know if there was anything he was doing. He was pitching well. That was one of the factors. And he threw a great game. And he has his own rhythm, and he stuck to his rhythm and got a lot of ground balls. And that's his game. So he pitched a great game."
on UCLA's three-day break between College World Series games
"It didn't affect us at all. We had practice every day, and the whole time we were watching games on TV. We still felt like we were out here, and we'll be ready for them tomorrow, and they're going to be ready for us, too."
on UCLA's mentality heading into Saturday's game
"Well, I mean, you gotta' be able to flush games. I think that's what we've done a great job of this year. And we're going to go back [to our hotel] and Coach just told us we're going to hash it out, talk it over, and time to get ready for the next game. And we've got them again tomorrow. So we're going to go home, talk it over, and be ready for tomorrow."