Tom Slater Played Quotations

Last night was a tough, tough, tough loss. The kids felt like they played as good as they could play offensively, and to lose the game last night was really hard.

Our kids came out tonight, competed and enjoyed the moment and got after it. I thought we played the whole game well. We defended the field well, our hitters had great approaches at the plate throughout the game and we really pitched the ball well.

I thought our kids really competed and played hard today. Evan did a great job in the start, and Luke did a tremendous job of keeping us in the game.

I thought we played pretty good defense tonight. We made some nice plays behind Butts to get him out of some innings. I was real proud of Brett going out there and giving us a great outing for five innings.

I was real happy with (Brett) Butts, he mixed his pitches well. We played offense today. Any time you can get eight runs off of eight hits, you did a nice job of playing offense. All in all it was a pretty solid effort by our club.

The fact that we've played such a tough schedule means that the game won't speed up on Friday night for us. We've played a good schedule so far, faced lots of good pitching and lots of good teams.

They just compete. They don't hang their heads. Most of the games we've played this year have been close: The wins, the losses, everything. I guess you could say our guys are used to playing in big games this year.

The kids bounced back (Saturday) and did extremely well, and then played well again on Sunday. So, from an emotional standpoint, and a confidence standpoint, it helps a lot. The hard work they're putting in every single day, this certainly makes them feel better to feel like they're being rewarded.

Every one of the kids that was in the lineup today has played well. I'm not going to make lineup changes after one night of us not doing a very good job of making adjustments.

They're disappointed to lose the game. You go into the weekend expecting to win every game, and our kids played their guts out and competed their butts off. And they came up short against a good Kentucky team.