bleedCrimson.net: After today's win is the mood around the team a lot lighter and that maybe a weight has been lifted?
Rocky Ward: Yeah and in particular for Ryan Beck and Parker Hipp who were with me through the full run. I know that Parker is usually pretty active around the dugout and he was sitting on the bench with a towel over his head waiting for the last out. He couldn't look. I gave Ryan a big hug after the game. It was a big deal. It gets that out of the way. It doesn't guarantee anything for tomorrow or the next day but it gets rid of a run. Over the years I've talked to you about establishing bases. Going into the game it was starting to get to me. It hadn't gotten to me before now. We've done a lot of things with this program. We've put it on the map, gotten national rankings, led the country in statistical categories, have a couple conference championships but it was starting to weigh on me, I know that.

To see Ryan Beck go and dominate like he did again under that type of pressure made it really special. It's something that no matter what happens from this point forward, that's what athletics is about. It's one of those things with Ryan that he can go back throughout most of his life and remember that day. When the chips were down and his back was against the wall, he brought his best. To me that's more cool than anything else. The significance it might have on a player's life.

Parker had a good day but as a DH he can only impact so much. His run, he got a great break on a bases loaded wild pitch. It didn't get but about 15 feet from the catcher. He got a great break. It was going to be pretty tight but he was safe and the catcher threw the ball away and Bobby scored on the back side. That broke open the game. He obviously had a lot of impact in getting it done.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the game today against Texas State?
Rocky Ward: Well it's been a little bit like what it's been lately. We start off the game okay. We gave up a run and that was fine. Then we get a two run home run by Bobby and kind of get it moving. Then we give up a cheap run in the second. In the top of the third we get back-to-back singles but Rust lines out to first and at the time considering it was a line drive at the first baseman, Mack is able to beat the first baseman back to the bag so we don't line into a double play. So you feel okay about it. It could have been worse. The end result is we have runners at first and second, nobody out with our three, four and five coming and we don't score.

We follow it up, Adam gives up a solo home run to a guy that hit this third home run of the year. The humidity is high and it's hot and the wind is blowing in from right and the guy just sneaks it over the wall in right but he hit it good. Then we walk a guy, hit a guy, give up a dumper to second for the second run of the inning. We have an error, that by the way was a pretty tough chance, that makes it 5-2.

We continue to get guys on base but we can't drive them in. We can't put together a big inning. This is has kind of been the problem with this club all year. We've left a lot of people on base and haven't been able to get the big inning and yet find a way to give up the big inning. So it's 5-2, you get a couple zeroes to work with and the game is kind of stabilized but we can't get anything going offensively and we give up a four-spot and it's more or less over at 9-2.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: You had four players, Bobby Lecount, Tanner Rust, Michael Medina and Evan Mott earn All-WAC honors and all four were very deserving.
Rocky Ward: It was a little different this year because you have ten teams instead of seven and the same number of all-conference spots available. I think Rust and Lecount were clear First Teamers and I thought Medina had earned First Team in particular because of his play in league. He was in the top six or eight hitters in conference play. I'm sure he was happy with the Second Team honor. Evan Mott, when you consider that a couple years ago was the first time we'd had a pitcher earn an all-conference honor, it's good to get a guy on and he was well deserving. I think both Medina and Mott were on the borderline of being First Team. I think we were well represented, especially when you finish as the six-seed out of a ten team league you expect the guys who finished in the top two or three to get a few more guys and I think that's how it worked out.

I've always been a big proponent of honoring as many guys as you can with what they did in their career. In the old Big Eight every senior was honorable mention at the least. I think that overall the guy that I felt got left out was Kyle Phillips. I thought his numbers were good enough to be considered to a Second Team guy. His conference numbers were very good. I think in the big picture Tanner Rust and Bobby Lecount are guys who should be given serious consideration for All-American honors with their overall numbers. You pretty much have to be First Team all-conference to be considered for All-American. Those are two marquee guys who have good enough numbers to be All-American guys.  Continue Reading This Post >>

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 >>