April 17, 2015
Head Coach Chad Holbrook
Opening Statement
“Obviously it was an incredible performance by [Jack] Wynkoop and probably our biggest and most important win thus far. I said to myself before the game, if we win the game, Wynkoop is going to have throw a complete game. My game plan was to hand Jack the ball and have him give it back to me when the game was over and that’s what he did. It was an incredible performance. When we got to the ninth with (Jaren) Kendall leading off, we were just trying to get him out first and if he got on base we were going to go to our bullpen. We didn’t want him (Jack) to pitch more than 130 pitches and he threw 131, so that was as high as we were going to go. But, overall an incredible performance and a big win for us. I know we had two errors on the board, but we played some great baseball tonight. We were into every pitch and if we could just bottle that, it would be great. It doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to win, but I love the way my team played tonight.
On Jack Wynkoop stepping up
“He’s (Jack) the one who’s most capable from a health perspective on our pitching staff. I told our guys, I feel as good as I possibly could that we won this game, but we haven’t won a series yet and we need to keep this in perspective. We still have incredible hurdles in front of us in trying to find and solidify ourselves from a pitching perspective on the weekends. We’re still a work in progress, especially with Wil [Crowe] and his injury. But tonight I loved our toughness, emotion, and our passion. And win lose or draw, ahead or behind, if we can play like that, at the end of the season I’m going to be a happy coach.”
Junior Infielder DC Arendas
On the win tonight
“I think Jack Wynkoop’s performance tonight was huge. With the things that we’ve been battling through recently, it was something we had to have. It was a performance he’s always going to remember, it was huge to get that for him. I think 1-9 tonight, our lineup did a really good job with plate approach. We talked a little bit yesterday with Coach (Brian) Buscher that we needed to take away a pitch from their (Vanderbilt’s) guys. They’re very talented pitchers so we just tried to take away the fastball tonight. We had a little bit of success with it and it’s something we have to continue to work on going forward.”
Junior Left-Hander Jack Wynkoop
On stepping up tonight
“I didn’t put any extra pressure on myself. I just went out there and tried to put our team in a position to win. Thankfully the defense played great tonight, we were swinging the bat and it all came together.
On going into tomorrow
“Tomorrow’s a big day. We’re trying to win the series tomorrow and we’re playing at home. Hopefully this is a turning point in our season if we keep winning.”
