June 5, 2004

Arizona Quotes From Game 4 of South Bend Regional

Arizona coach Andy Lopez

On the game…
“It was a well-played ballgame for half of it and I’m sure both clubs felt a little shaky about some of the things that were going on. For the most part, you are going to see that type of game when it gets to this point in the season. We are very excited about being in tomorrow’s ballgame.”

On pitcher Kevin Guyette…
“I am very happy with his performance. He really deserved a win, but those things happen.”

On tomorrow’s game…
“This is a great regional, you don’t see any 14-12 scores. This is good baseball, I expect to see another good game tonight and one tomorrow as well.”

Fr. IF Jason Donald

On his approach to the game after the error…
“Its human nature to try to do too much after you make a mistake. I just tried to stay within myself and I was able to get a hit and then score.”

So. RHP Kevin Guyette

On his performance…
“I got good defense early in the game. My team made a lot of great plays and that helped me pitch well.”

On reaching Sunday’s regional championship…
“We expected to be here, we will definiely continue to work hard and play with a lot of heart.”

“The last month of our season prepared us for being here, every playoff series we had to take two out of three games. We are prepared for this and it is a step in the right direction, but we have a long way to go.”

Kent State Quotes from Game 4 of the South Bend Regional

Kent State coach Rick Rembielak

On the game …
“The tempo for us was not set early. We seemed to end up bobbling some balls. Against a good team like that, you can’t really open a door even a little bit. In some of those cases, maybe a run didn’t score. … Jason [Brunke] had to pitch a lot more. He threw a lot more pitches. There were a couple of long innings there and it seemed to get him out of rhythm. I think from the defensive side there, it may have set the wrong tempo.”

“The little things just kept adding up both on the ground ball and getting behind on guys.”

“Once again, I think the momentum shifted and it kept shifting to their side and they took advantage of it.”

On Arizona’s pitching …
“I think the difference was that their guy ended up throwing better breaking balls. Ones that we were taking good swings at were off of fast balls. He started throwing that more. … He was very fast at coming up to the plate and throwing three outs. But he started hitting more with his breaking balls and I think that kinda started giving us a little more fits. Now we have to contend with breaking pitches along with fast balls.”

On looking into the next game …
“These guys did battle back. They’re blue collar. I won’t know until the second game if this helps or hurts us. We came back, we fought back. But then the error, the base hit and then the sacrifice fly and the guy scores from second base. I don’t know how this is going to affect us. It’s not a good sign to go in and do something like this. I reminded them after the game that that game was over but we did not play our best game. That was not a clean game by any means on our side. So we have to play it better, overall a cleaner game.”

Junior pitcher Jason Brunke

On the errors in the game …
“I can’t blame the fielding. I should have done better myself.”

Senior IF Chad Kinyon

On his 21 game hitting streak coming to an end …
“Obviously, I didn’t even know I had that long of a hitting streak. Now it’s over.”