Postgame Quotes – Loyola Marymount vs. UCLA
POSTGAME QUOTES
NCAA Los Angeles Regional – Game Six
UCLA 6, Loyola Marymount 1 (June 2, 2019)
UCLA Head Coach John Savage
Opening remarks
“Well, obviously, it was a long day for everybody. Whenever you come out of the losers’ bracket and end up winning that Sunday night game—especially with that early u-turn on the evening. I’m real proud of our team, I’m proud of our guys. Very good approach. Played a good Baylor team. Beat them. And then tonight, really the story was Nick Nastrini. Nastrini hadn’t pitched since late February. Had that thoracic outlet syndrome and can’t say enough for his discipline over that time and his dedication to the weight room and throwing program. And when he got cleared, he was ready to go. For me, we needed that outing. I think everybody’s kind of up against the wall a little bit on the mound right now and Nastrini stepped up in a major way. A lot of baseball left and certainly tomorrow should be a pretty special time for LA college baseball with Loyola, what they’re doing, and certainly what we’ve done. So hopefully the place will be rocking again like it has the last two days and we can get at each other.”
On importance of Nick Nastrini’s five-inning outing
“Well, like I said earlier, the outing by Nick was – we really needed that. It really came out of nowhere. Like I said, we were up against it a little bit in terms of starting pitchers. Our relievers threw eight innings the first game [vs. Baylor]. We anticipated him going 65, 70 pitches. To get five innings out of him, especially pitching out of problems in the fifth inning with one out with the bases loaded. He gets a fly ball and then he gets a strikeout. I just can’t say enough about his – you know, everybody’s played the entire season. He hasn’t pitched in a game in three months. That’s very difficult to do. To get up to game speed and make pitches and control the environment. He’s right. He was prepared and he went out and did it. I think everybody in that clubhouse is really happy for him.”
On difficulty of Nastrini’s outing having not pitched in three months
“I told the guys it’s one of the better Bruin outings I’ve been a part of in my last 15 seasons at UCLA. It was only five innings, so it wasn’t a nine-inning shutout or anything. But like you said, from where he was to what he did tonight in the biggest game of the year is just a remarkable lesson for our guys of toughness and competitiveness and perseverance. You can go on about some of the things he’s done over the last three months to get himself in this position. It’s really something that we’ll talk about for a long time.”
UCLA freshman pitcher Nick Nastrini
On how many times he’s been off a mound and what kind of contributions he expected to make coming in
“I was off the mound four, five times before tonight. Coming out of my surgery and getting cleared, after I got cleared, I was really thinking I was just going to be more of a mid-relief kind of guy, not really going to start. But coming into tonight, I was prepared. I knew I was prepared—my weight room, my throwing program and just my mental game—I knew I was prepared going into tonight.”
On how his arm is feeling tonight
“My throwing program coming into it had me throwing a lot of high intensity, so coming into tonight, I felt like my arm was prepared to go ahead and take on the role that I did. My arm feels really good as of right now. We’ll see how it feels tomorrow, but as of right now, I feel good.”
UCLA junior infielder Chase Strumpf
On how nice it was to hit seven home runs as team today
“I think that’s just a testament to our approach. A lot of guys are just trying to go middle of the field and when you have that approach, it kind of tends to translate to maybe a lift to left field or something like that. None of us are trying to hit home runs. When you hit a home run, you’re never trying to. It’s just a solid commitment to an approach to the middle of the field and today it showed up.”
On timeline following Saturday’s loss to LMU
“So we went to bed around 11, 11:30. Had to wake up at 7:30, get some breakfast before the bus left at 9. So essentially we’ve been here about 12 hours. Coach Savage said it this morning: We’ve prepared for this. Through the fall, long days, morning weights, long practices, long inner-squads. We’ve prepared for this since Day 1. So we all felt really confident going into today, even on a lack of sleep and just a draining day yesterday. We felt very confident.”
On determination of upperclassmen to not let this run come to an end
“I think that comes back to a conversation a lot of us upperclassmen had before the season. We kind of sat down and realized, hey, we have a solid team. A lot of talent, especially a lot of freshmen coming in that are really going to really contribute right away. We realized that, for a lot of us juniors and seniors, this quite possibly could be our last season, so we’re going to make the most of it – bottom line. We’re not going to look ahead. We’re not going to say we want to get here, get here. We just want to make the most of it, commit to our team, commit to our freshmen, catch them up to speed, and just be team-oriented and just be bought into the team and just see what happens. All year, I feel like we’ve done a pretty good job of not looking ahead and just kind of staying with it and staying present and staying with our team. That’s why so far this year has been really exciting and I can’t wait to go forward.”
LMU Head Coach Jason Gill
Opening remarks
“First of all, I tip my cap to UCLA and the way they came out and hit the baseball tonight. The ball was jumping early in the game and they barreled up some baseballs. I was proud of our pitcher (Matt) Voelker, who does what we do. He threw strikes. I think we walked one guy in nine innings. Anytime we do what we set out to do, which is throw strikes and play defense behind them, then I’m proud of my guys. He wasn’t scared. He went right after them and they did a heck of a job, barreling up some baseballs that left the yard. All of our pitchers behind him did a heck of a job. Freshman Alex Burge comes in there and shuts their offense down, which I thought was extremely impressive. We get to look forward to that for a couple more years, which is nice. Our defense played well behind. We kicked the ball a little bit behind and their offense can do that because their offense is fast and they put pressure on a defense. As for our team, I have nothing but good things to say about them. They showed up, we played, and their pitcher did a good job. He kept the ball down and they played defense when they had to. They have one of the best defenses in the country. We hit a couple of line drives their leftfielder made really good plays on. I was excited that our offense got their closer out there in the eighth inning and had to go two innings and some of our hitters got a look at him. If he comes into the game tomorrow, we’ll have some guys that have seen him. I am proud of my team. They played hard. Baseball happened today.”
On what sets UCLA apart from any team he has seen this season
“They’re really good at baseball. I mean, come on, they are older. A lot of those guys had an opportunity to fail as freshmen and start in a lot of games. They have a lot of at bats under their belts, so you really have to pitch them and change your patterns against them because they are intelligent. And they are big and strong. I didn’t see one guy in their lineup under 6-foot, with exception of their third baseman who gets down the line in a 4.1. They are athletic, they are big, they are good at baseball and they’re well coached. You add those things up and you have the No. 1 team in the country. So yeah, they are set apart a little bit, but we hung in there with them the last two days. Two months ago we couldn’t have done that. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
On his team’s pitching possibilities for tomorrow
“I don’t know anything about Codie (Paiva) yet. We’ll have to see how he feels tomorrow. I know Codie’s mentality will be – he’ll be knocking on my back saying, ‘I can pitch, I can pitch,’ but sometimes I have to be the manager and make decisions based on health as well. So I’m not certain about him. Obviously Josh Agnew is out. Matt Voelker is out. And Alex Burge is out. But the rest of them are all hot. They are all ready to go. We feel comfortable with who we have there. Some of what happened today and Alex (Burge) doing what Alex did in the game, helped us out quite a bit for tomorrow because we didn’t have to go through a lot of arms today. That was a big deal for us.”
LMU redshirt junior infielder Steven Chavez
On what made UCLA’s starting pitcher so tough to get anything going against him
“He was locating his pitches very well early in the game. He made it tough for us. We put good swings on the bat, but seemingly he was able to pound his spots. You have to tip your cap to a guy doing that early on in a game. We got to him a little bit later on after seeing him a couple times, but he did a great job the first time through the lineup.”