June 1, 2012
Stanford 9
Fresno State 1
June 1, 2012
Klein Field at Sunken Diamond
Head Coach Mark Marquess
On Appel's pitching performance
"I thought it was a great pitching performance by Mark. He was tough and had good command with his stuff. He was striking out a lot of people because he was throwing a lot of strikes."
"(Mark) always gives us a chance to win."
On impact of Austin Wilson's go-ahead two-run single
"We left a lot of runners on base and had a lot of opportunities to score, but I thought Wilson's hit getting two runs on the board was big."
On upcoming regional game against Pepperdine
"I really haven't seen Pepperdine. I know they're quality team. The thing about it is this time of year is that everybody is capable to win. If you don't play well, you get beat."
On pitching after Wilson's go-ahead double
"It's great to get runs and run support. As far as my mentality, we don't pitch to the scoreboard. Getting two runs definitely gave me a little boost knowing that we're on the board and at least while I'm keeping them close, we could get a few more [runs]."
On pitch selection against Fresno State
"It was mostly fastballs, but the breaking ball was a lot more affective against them. They are a fastball hitting team, so we knew the off-speed would be affective against them, learning from our mistakes against them the first time around."
Austin Wilson
On fifth inning go-ahead two-run single
"The whole game I thought the pitching strategy was to bang us inside. The at-bat before I got called out on a strike-third call inside. It was 3-2 again, so I had a pretty good feeling they were going to throw me a fastball inside again. I thought I hit it pretty well, but two runs came in and that's all that really matters."
Fresno State head coach Mike Batesole
There was a couple big factors today. I thought [Fresno State SP Justin] Haley showed a lot of heart. He pitched last week twice on short rest, 120-something pitches and then on short rest in a big game another 50-plus. We tried to trick his body this week and got him up at 5 o'clock a couple times so his body would think it was an extra day or two so he could have his full rest, but he didn't and obviously you could see he wasn't as sharp as he was the last seven or eight times out. But give him credit for going out there and pitching with a lot of heart. I think the other big factor is Appel is really, really good. Last time out we took his fastball away early and we were pretty sure he was going to come out and make an adjustment this week and surely he did. He came out with two outstanding breaking balls he didn't throw. Last time I looked at the chart he was way less than 50 percent first-pitch fastballs and he was up in the 60s on breaking balls. I don't know how many he ended up with. We made him make an adjustment. The kid is fantastic. He had the answer. He had two great breaking balls to go to.
On seeing possibly the best game pitched by Appel:
Yes, this year. I'm pretty sure he could have won a big league game today. That was fantastic the way he was able to pitch backwards when he wanted to. And then a couple times you got some young hitters out there who look for the breaking ball and he was right on time at 97.
On Fresno State SP Justin Haley:
I think he emptied his tank early on short rest. Three times in a row out on short rest is a lot to ask of a young man. What I really like is he pitched with a lot of heart. He was able to get his arm up and pitch downhill the first few innings. We tried to stick with him as long as we could and he gave us everything he had.
On facing Michigan State tomorrow:
I watched the game this afternoon. Obviously, we were locked in and focused on everything we could with Appel and beating Stanford, so I did get to watch them play once today. But from what I can see from watching one game, they're very aggressive offensively. Even in some situations when they were behind they kept putting the pressure on offensively. We've got five games on video. I imagine about a half hour from now I'll be watching on of them.