“Yeah, we loved it. I mean, again, it’s the greatest conference in America. It’s the greatest players in America. It’s the greatest coaches in America. I’ll say it’s the greatest umpires in America. It’s the best of everything. It’s the best. Like this stadium and what this town does for this week is incredible. I haven’t had anything that reminds me of the Omaha experiences that I’ve had anything more than what is put on this week. It’s everything that everybody that’s in baseball wants to be a part of, and it’s tremendous. And it was tremendous for me to watch our team. It’s hard to think that you can have significant growth on a team this late in the season, but we did. We did because there were so many different challenging situations that our kids will be able to learn from. We were able to put so many young guys in situations through thick and thin, through good and bad. They’re going to be better because of it, and it’s the biggest stage they’ll play on until they get to the big leagues. This is a very similar field in Omaha, especially when you’re the team playing LSU like that. That was hostile territory out there. And our kids, our kids will learn from it. And our kids aren’t perfect. Nobody’s team is perfect. These are 18 to 22-23 year olds. They’re going to make mistakes. It’s our job to help get them through it, learn the lesson and be better because of it. So it’s a tremendous week, hard to think that it can get better until you get to Omaha.”
You know, we fielded 97.9% in 30 conference games this year. It was not a problem all year. Why it was a problem this week on this field? I don’t know. We got to dig into it, got to talk to our players, communicate a little bit, ask them as we get to a regional, ‘Is there anything we can do to help get you more ready?’ I don’t think there is because, you know, our guys prepare very well. Our guys are are good. We feel a 97.9% [fielding percentage], that’s pretty damn good all year and for whatever reason, that type of defense didn’t show up this week and we’ll do everything we can to get it better.”
“You know, it was a crazy play, obviously. And I do want to say on the record, that was a very difficult situation for Derek Malika and that crew. And I think they did everything they could to try to get the call right. I think they did get the call right. And look, that’s that’s not a comfortable situation for umpires to be in. Nobody wants that. I know they don’t want to be at the center of attention, but it was a crazy play. There was a very similar play recently that was, you know, kind of almost, not the identical play, [but] very, very similar. I think we drew on watching that on television and having seen it already and we just thought, ‘Hey, let’s bring this up. Let’s see what happens and see if we can get the interpretation in our favor.'”
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