June 6, 2004
Notre Dame coach Paul Mainieri
On the game …
“Well, first of all, I would like to congratulate Arizona and their coach, Andy Lopez. I think they have a great team, and a tremendous coach. Obviously, they’re very well coached. They earned it and they deserve it. I tip my hat to them. It was obviously a very disappointing loss for us. I’m not disappointed in my kids or in the effort that they gave and the way that they battled the whole game, and the whole year really. Their pitcher was really, really tough, especiallly with our line-up being so right-hand oriented. When I saw that the wind was blowing out today, I felt good about the way we swing the bats, but the kid was really tough. He was a competitor, and we had a tough time with him. I’m disappointed for the kids. I’m not disappointed in them.”
On Danny Dressman tripping …
Nothing was on. He took a secondary lead, and he saw the pitch in the dirt, and I think he was just kind of getting his momentum to go to second just in case the ball got away from the catcher. He just got his feet tangled up and he just tripped. I feel terrible for him. I told him after the game that if you didn’t have the walk, you wouldn’t have been on first base to trip. He was trying to do something to help the team, and it’s unfortunate.”
On the end of the season …
“Our kids played hard right until the end. If you were in that dugout, it was nothing but optimism, positive talk. We all believed we were going to do it. Sometimes in this business, you don’t get over the hump. It’s been a great year. The people in the community just embraced our team. They gave us a lot of energy to be honest with you. Just look at this weekend.”
Junior 1B Matt Edwards
On his home run pitches …
“Neither one of the home runs were sliders… The second home run he came up and in with a fast ball.”
On the end of the season …
“It’s always difficult to end your season. I’m going to miss the seniors that we have, like Javi Sanchez, Steve Sollmann, Joe Thaiman. Zach Sisko is a leader and he really stepped up when Steve got hurt. As far as the way this weekend went, they threw an excellent pitcher again, and he had his good stuff. It didn’t work out for us that way. … We all thought we could come back and do this. Everybody had confidence and we were ready to go today. We just got beat out there today, and not because of anything that happened earlier this week. We put that all behind us and we were ready to go.”
Arizona Quotes
Arizona coach Andy Lopez
On the game…
“We are very fortunate to come out on top of a very good baseball game. I would like to thank the University of Notre Damefor putting on an outstanding regional.”
On Notre Dame tying the game…
“It honestly did not effect us. My team is a young and resilient group they have been in this situation before. I told the team at the beginning of the season that this might be how we have to win games.”
On our next opponent…
“We will have to wait and see who me play, but again this was a great baseball game and a great baseball enviornment. I can only hope that we can have the same type of play in the next coming week.”
So. pitcher John Meloan
On throwing 140 pitches…
“I throw that many in most outings. I feel alright and thought I could have finished the game. Sometimes you have to hand it over and I thought Koley did a great job closing it out.
So. catcher Nick Hundley
On his throw to first…
“It was an opportunity and I took it. The ball was in the dirt it looked like he caught a cleat and fell down.”