bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the weekend overall?
Rocky Ward: It was a weekend where we really couldn't get any traction. We didn't play terrible baseball but we didn't play great. We just kind of played in the middle. They made plays that needed to be made and we didn't. We left a boatload of people on base all weekend and in particular game three. That was a game that we'd finally gotten the edge. We'd gotten a 4-2 lead and got a zero on the board and kind of had control of the game and had runners on base and couldn't score. We had runners on second, couldn't get it done. We had a leadoff double that couldn't score. A man at third with less than two and couldn't score. It was overall a frustrating weekend.

We had a couple more injuries. Kyle Phillips missed the Saturday game because of a rib injury. Ormseth on Sunday hurt his elbow, we'll have a little bit better idea later. We're already pretty short. The game Phillips didn't play, Brandon Cooper played well. He had a double and score a run that kind of got us moving. We just couldn't get much together. They're [UTSA] kind of an emotional team and that type of team has a tendency to do well when they're on the top side and they were on the top side most of the time except for a few innings and in those cases where we led we made mistakes. When Ormseth came out there was a man at second and we wild pitch him to third and then wild pitch him in. Just shoot ourselves into the foot and put them back in the game. They've got some guys with some pop and one of them barreled it up and put it out of the yard. Then we lost a man and gave up a three run inning. It's been our achilles heel. We really struggle with giving up multiple run innings. I think if you look at our statistics, I think that maybe this ball club has put up more shutout innings than any team I've had but they've also had a tendency to give up three and four run innings on the other side of it.   Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Can you remember having back-to-back complete games from your pitchers?
Rocky Ward: No, I don't think so. We were within an out of back-to-back shutouts. We may have done that somewhere but not often. They're pretty rare occurrences. In particular for it to occur at our home park in this time of the year when it plays very, very fast. We had good conditions, we didn't have windy conditions. We had the wind blowing in from right for a little bit. It was a real fair offensive weekend on both sides from the standpoint of the fly ball. Our guys pitched very well. People are going to look at the series from the outside and say it's just San Jose, they don't have a very good record, but they came into the series leading the league in hitting. We did a pretty good job against a pretty good offense. They didn't have a lot of power but they weren't one of the bottom guys in hitting. We did a nice job all the way around. Outside of Ormseth's start and he's been off a little bit. He hasn't had a real good year. He's lost a little bite on his breaking ball and it's getting put into play a little bit more often and he's pitched into bad luck. It seems like every time the ball is hit it's in the hole. We got an outstanding relief out of Collins and Mott to close it out.

bc.net: This was the first time since 2003 that you'd won the final home series. What was the difference this year?
RW: There have been some pretty good teams that have come in late in the year. I think part of it is that this is a team that feels like as a unit that they've underperformed a little bit. We did a lot of work with them trying to make sure they understood that the league championship is still in reach. It's going to require a lot of things to happen but the start of the first thing and the only thing we can control is to win nine straight. So we won three straight. Now you've got six more and obviously there's four teams to jump over and there are a lot of things that have to fall into place but you've got to do what you can do and what you can control. I think there was a little bit of recommitment going the weekend. To maybe directly the answer a little bit better, out of the eight seniors, five of them were pitchers and all of them are key guys on this club and they're pretty close. So when Adam went out and dominated, I think it kind of challenged each other and it fell on top of each other. Beck goes out and dominates and we had a little hiccup but Collins and Evan go out and dominate.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your overall thoughts on the weekend series against UT-Arlington?
Rocky Ward: Overall Arlington had put themselves in a pretty good position, a game back of Bakersfield coming in so one of the teams that had played themselves up to the top of the league. They had also predominantly played the bottom of the league where we had predominantly played the top of the league and that's kind of what it more disappointing than anything.

We had one of those games on Friday where Adam didn't throw poorly, it was one of those pure bad baseball luck days. We didn't play great but they didn't play great. We left for a week and our field got hard as a rock and we didn't do a good job of prepping it before the game and all of the sudden they get four balls that hit the hardpan in front of the plate and bounce over the infielders' heads including a key one with their four-hole to the plate with the bases loaded and one out and what would have been just a normal ground ball to the shortstop double play ended up bouncing over my shortstop's head and leads to a couple runs and runs to a three or four run inning. It was kind of a back breaker. Then again you play on the same field but it benefitted their style. We came in with 40 home runs and they came in with 12 or 13. We're more of a line-drive power type ball club and they come out and get the ball put in play and a hard fast surface benefits that type of ball club.

Their guy was pretty good. The guy was tough to deal with. Mid to upper 80's, guy had a funny arm action and really didn't have very good stuff in the first three innings, I was disappointed with what we did with him in those first three innings but then all of the sudden he started throwing a pretty dominant cutter for three or four innings and he got to pitch on the top side because we gave up some big runs. It was one of those games that you're irritated by. It was a bad luck game. We didn't play great and they beat us 9-4 in what looks like they handled us but they just seemed to get a lot more of the baseball breaks than we did.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the weekend series with Sacramento State?
Rocky Ward: Obviously we're disappointed that we lost two out of three. Sacramento played well. We didn't play poorly but we didn't play great. We just kind of played average baseball and they played pretty good. I was disappointed by it but not surprised by it. I think that Sacramento is like a lot of guys in the league. They've got a pretty good ball club, they've got enough talent to beat you and you've got to play well to win.

bc.net: Going back to yesterday's loss obviously the double plays hurt but specifically the third inning and the seventh inning were the key innings in the game offensively.
RW: Yeah, it's one of those deals as a coach where I thought I managed the Sunday game against Dallas Baptist great and it's not just about making decisions but it's about when you make the decisions that they work. I didn't move my runners on the Rust double play early part of it [in the third inning] because Goldstrom isn't a great runner on the back side and I had Michael Medina on the front side who I thought would steal third easily but if they threw to second and Tanner swings through the pitch then we end up with a man at third and two outs and we've shot ourselves in the foot. Every time you get two strikes on a hitter you need to do what you can to protect them because they have to swing at a strike. They can hit into a double play and not have a whole lot of control over it. It was a chance to break it open because you had the middle of the lineup coming and it's one of the weaknesses of having Jory in the two hole. He's performed well there and he can't change the fact that he's not a very good runner compared to Blackstone in the two hole. The net result on an individual basis, Kent Blackstone moving down in the lineup to where Jory was hitting has helped both guys individually but it didn't help the way the team offense was put together. If Blackstone had been that runner then we would have run earlier before we got to two strikes. It's just one of those things. You can't fix everything and Tanner, that's the only negative you can look at with his record. He's hit into too many double plays, he leads the team into that category. Part of it is he puts the ball in play a lot and he hits the ball pretty hard. When he hits it at them it's a pretty easy double play because the timing.

The seventh, it was okay. Parker hits into the double play, the ball is hit hard but we rebuild the inning and get the bases loaded two outs and Kyle got a pitch to hit, he just didn't get quite enough of it and flew out to right. You can say that about any baseball game I guess. The double play in baseball is like a turnover in football. It always hurts you, it always flips momentum to the opponent and at the same time there's times when you can't do anything about it.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the Sunday loss to Dallas Baptist?
Rocky Ward: Yesterday in the fourth inning was a game that could not be won and in the ninth it was a game that could not be lost. So we managed to have a chance to win an un-winable game and managed to lose an un-loseable one. That's the best way I could describe it. It's the most amazing thing this game of baseball. Bottom line is for the first time this year I felt like my ball club didn't come prepared to play. They'd won the first two, the first one very handily, the second one we jumped on them early then let them back in it but then they didn't challenge and we scored the two to close it out and win. So it was the first time that I felt my club… they didn't disrespect the opponent but they didn't get as prepared as they should have. You look at it and we had a little bit of concern and you get on some guys' cases about how they're preparing but then you go out and give up nine and you're down 9-0 and the game is lost.

But I came back to them and said, "Here, this is what we do guys. We've used up a lot of their better pitchers. They've got this guy on the mound. He's got some command issues. He did not start the season as a weekend starter. He's had some pretty good outings but after watching the guy he's not going to beat us. He's going to throw too many pitches and they're going to have to beat us with the bullpen. They've got a closer left but he's a short guy. Twelve appearances and fifteen innings. If we get this guy out and we get to the bullpen, with a 9-0 lead they're going to go with some of the guys that haven't pitched much." And that's exactly what they did. We got that guy out, they brought in a couple kids that didn't have very much experience to try to get by. Those kids didn't have any command, they walked the world and all of the sudden we put up six and get back in it. They brought their guy at that point. We had Higginbotham in the game and after he gave up the three runs when he came in, he gave us a couple zeros to work on and we just kept at them until we got a breakthrough, got their reliever a little worn out, got him extended. We give up a solo run when Evan comes in but it was a very favorable offensive day. We get the three in the eighth to get it tied. For a team to give up a nine run lead and end up tied in the ninth, it's almost impossible psychologically to recover from, especially when you're on the road.   Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: A good win for the team last night against UNM. It's always good to get a rivalry win and you've had some success against them recently winning six of seven and nine of the past 13.
Rocky Ward: We're winning some important games. We're just not winning some of the ones we need. The game last night was good. It was good to see the ball leave the stadium. It was good to beat the Lobos. It was good to do it with power through the home run. That's been a long-running tradition. We've out-homered them pretty consistently in our contests. To get some quality pitching down the stretch and pitch around some challenges, it was just a good character-building game.

Quinnton Mack was out, my starting left fielder, so Brandon Cooper gets his first start as an Aggie in left and had really a plus-plus play in the first or second. Guys that hadn't been full-time starters, Joe Koerper hadn't gotten a lot of playing time lately got a start at first, Derek Umphres was out with a wrist injury. It wasn't my standard lineup that we'd been using and we kind of attacked them. Sometimes in baseball you can have game plans and sometimes you can't. We started Alex Foulon, he hadn't started since Blackstone had been back and he played well, had a key base hit early in the game. We started those three right-handed hitters with the idea that we had Blackston, Paulson and Haskins available as left-handers when they went to right-handed pitchers. The game plan kind of came together. It was overall a good win.

We used Omseth who had a little bit of a short outing this weekend. He came in and got some outs for us and when he got in trouble we had a chance to get Ryan Beck back to the mound after he had a real bad outing in his last out against Bakersfield. It's good to get a guy back on the horse, especially a guy like that who took a pretty good licking that had been one of the leaders on the ball club. He came in and got us out of a nobody out bases loaded jam. We got a good close out of Evan Mott and Bradley. Bradley has become pretty comfortable in the closing role. We scored the four in the bottom of the eighth that made it a non-save situation but that's still the New Mexico game. Not that long ago they scored six or seven late to beat us and we've done the same thing to them. There's some long running history of some crazy games between us. A five-run lead in the ninth to me is a close and emotionally it was a close. Just because it didn't count as a save doesn't mean it doesn't feel like it.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the conference opening weekend against Texas State?
Rocky Ward: Day one, Adam didn't have very good stuff and maybe we undervalued Texas State's offense but their statistics showed a team that had only hit a couple home and was hitting about .240. We knew historically that they'd been a pretty good pitching team and so I was a little surprised I guess at how poorly Adam did but maybe after you look back at the weekend they were a little better than what we thought.

It was a game in which he didn't pitch well but we got stabilized and swung the bats well and felt good about the game. I always feel good about winning the opening conference game. I was pleased with the way we played.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: You had a big weekend offensively scoring 79 runs in four games, three of those being seven inning games.
Rocky Ward: We got done what we needed to get done. They weren't very good. I was pretty pleased with the weekend overall. You still have to go get it done. A lot of those big innings, they dropped fly balls and didn't make some plays, that sort of thing that has a tendency to extend innings and in some cases that has been a little bit of our issue and when you give up four or five out innings not only do they score a lot, they put a lot of pressure on the pitch count and it translates into earned runs later in the game because you don't have as many quality pitches to throw at the guys. Overall it was a good weekend and we did what we needed to do.

When you look at the season to date the only real disappointment is letting one of those games against Milwaukee get away. I don't think Milwaukee is going to be the next Kent State, I'm not saying that but I didn't think Kent State was going to be an Omaha team either. They were a pretty good ball club and they're going to win a lot of games when they get back home. That was the only real disappointing loss from a reality standpoint. We played well enough to beat Illinois but made a defensive mistake that cost us that game. Made a defensive mistake against North Carolina State that cost us a game and the same thing against Oklahoma but realistically those are all real high level competitors. When you look at the year, at 12-10, looking back to it 13-9 would have been acceptable after seeing those teams and playing in the conditions we played in. You feel like at this stage you're one game away.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: You had a little bit of a rough road trip and that seemed like a game that early in the season you really needed to have and you were able to get it.
Rocky Ward: Yeah, I think that when we scheduled the trip that we knew that this was a possibility. NC State was going to be very, very good. We didn't know much about Wake from the standpoint of how good they were going to be but we knew they would be pretty good at home and those five games are against very high level opponents on their home fields and we caught a little bit of a bad break in that we had really bad weather. Both the Friday and Saturday games against Wake were in miserable conditions, wind chills were under 30 degrees. Even the Sunday game, at least we had some sun but the high temperature didn't get over 30. So it was one of those deals where we were playing a tough opponent on the road and I've got a southern team playing in cold weather. It seemed like everything was kind of against us. We played a pretty decent baseball game on Friday, couldn't score again, Saturday we gave up the eight and trying to finish that game was a challenge in itself with as bad as the weather it was and the unlikelihood of a comeback. Sunday's game was a big deal.

We went to Ryan Beck who has obviously been a starter for quite a while and I just felt like I had to go with my senior leadership so I gave him the ball and he went out and pitched fabulously. It helped that we scored early and got the lead for the first time in quite a long time. He was able to pitch to the point where we were able to get a couple more runs and then Casey Collins came in on the close role and he was fabulous. They weren't quite unhittable but he had some really great stuff. He was throwing 91-92. We still didn't have a great offensive day but it was freezing. Cold conditions are generally beneficial to the pitcher. It's a little harder to play defense but pitchers can throw inside and anybody that's played baseball knows in cold weather that if you don't hit the ball on the barrel you can't feel your hands for a couple innings and hitters have a tendency to not be quite as aggressive in cold weather.   Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Working backwards from yesterday's game you had two innings, the third and the eighth where you had chances to really score a lot of runs but ultimately only came away with one run.
Rocky Ward: I guess it was a fear at the beginning of the year because of the inexperience of so many players in the lineup. Figure out who was going to step up and drive runs in. Coach Evans is a big optimist but he had a point and said we kind of had the same problem a year ago but Zach Voight stepped forward and became the guy and you had Zac Fisher who was going to drive runs in. You have Hipp that's the three-hole guy, he's in a hole where he kind of does it all but your four and five hole guys gotta drive runs in, gotta square it up. It's kind of the way baseball lineups are set. One, two and three are table setters, get on base and the four and five drive them in. We really didn't have that for a bit until Zach took over the reins and became a good RBI guy and then with LeCount and Phillips hitting in the six and seven holes, those guys on some days could be really good RBI guys. So the only guy that's really served that purpose for us is Lecount and he's done a good job of driving guys in but nobody else really has done it. We've had a lot of opportunities, left a lot of people on base and that weakness showed up pretty strong in both the Saturday and Sunday games.

You get beat 3-2 where we gave up two unearned runs in the game against Illinois which normally are not noticed in our style because somebody's going to go square something up and even on a bad day you're going to go score four or five and all of the sudden it mattered and then it mattered again in the second game where we had a chance to take control of the game. We led it, we had opportunities early in the game where we didn't execute, didn't move runners. We could have scored two or three runs throughout the course of the game and kind of controlled it because we were getting a really good outing out of Ormseth. That's the danger of the inning. We had a chance to score a lot of runs in the sixth and only get one, that was a win for them. Even though we took a 1-0 lead in the sixth, we left the inning with momentum in their hands. We get the first out but then they hit one off the end of the bat to right and they moved the runner. We tried to pitch out on the play and so we had a pick but we didn't have the pitch out far enough and he hit it off the end of the bat and all of the sudden it's first and third and then they hit a fly ball to left and we're going to get the tying run and Paulson drops it. Then the next thing you know there's a double down the line and when the dust settles you're down 4-1. Mike [Ormseth] did a good job of pitching around the inning but with a ball club that's kind of struggled to figure out who's going to be the guys and drive runs in, it's not an insurmountable lead but it kind of felt that way.

I'm trying to make some adjustments. We've used a lot of different players and we're still trying to get some performance out of some guys that we know we're going to get. It's just a matter of getting it now and starting to get more confidence, we're just not getting it soon enough.  Continue Reading This Post >>