March 11, 2014

Recap | Box Score | Photo Gallery

Head Coach Chad Holbrook
Opening Statement
It was a great day for our team and our players and as important as the game was I felt that what transpired before the game was as important. Martha [Childress] has been an incredible inspiration to our student body and our athletic department. How she has handled such an unfortunate situation with such grace, it is just simply amazing to me and I am certainly glad that our baseball team has gotten to know her. I feel lucky to know her and I look forward to spending time with her and her family as we go forward. If that doesn’t put a baseball game in to perspective I don’t know what will. We pitched and played defense like we have done all season long. I was very, very pleased with the way we swung the bat too. We don’t have much to show for it in the hit column but we squared a lot of balls up and we hit some balls awfully hard. The air was kind of stagnant there from the middle innings on and some balls just died, but all in all it was a great day for our program, university, and athletic department. We played a darn good clean game of baseball as well and now we can get off of our feet for a couple of days, get some work in and get ready for a very good Ole Miss team this weekend.

On being prepared for Ole Miss
We have played 16 games and we have played a pretty clean brand of baseball. I couldn’t be more proud of how we have played and I would say that if we were 12-4. We have just played good clean baseball. We have pitched, we have played defense and we have done okay swinging the bat too. I thought today instead of an eight hit performance it was more like a 12 or 13 hit game. We had some quality at bats there. I think we are prepared, but that doesn’t guarantee us anything come Friday because we are playing a quality team and an older team. The kid that they are throwing Friday night hasn’t given up an earned run all year long. It is an incredible challenge but we have played well and we are as prepared as we can be except we are banged up. We need to get Joey [Pankake] and Max [Schrock] back healthy. Grayson [Greiner] took a ball off of the knee that has got me worried sick. Hopefully the next few days we can do some healing and be ready by Friday.

Junior outfielder Elliott Caldwell
On the continuous success of the team
We have worked hard all season long and we are going to continue to work hard and battle at the plate. The pitchers are going to continue to throw strikes and keep hitters off balance. That is what we have been working on all year and we are just going to keep doing what we do.

On driving in the first run of the game
Well I knew that there where two strikes and I had to battle. There were runners in scoring position and if I got a hit I knew they would come home.

Freshman right-handed pitcher Taylor Widener
On his first start
It was good. I feel like I didn’t have control over everything but I was getting [the them to hit] ground balls and our players were making plays and our offense was scoring runs for me as well.

On the performance of the pitching staff
You can be relaxed up there because you know that if you aren’t on top of your game there is going to be someone coming in behind you to pick you right up.