May 17, 2001
Recap|Box Score|NCAA Regionals
Pacific Head Coach Brain Kolze
Opening Statement: I'm really proud of how the team adjusted. We haven't played in 10 or 11 days other than some intrasquads to get ready for this. They are tired of taking finals and practicing because that's all we've done for the last 10 days. We told them to just come out and have fun, stay loose and play like it's opening day. Basically that's what it was like because we never had a break like this before and the credit goes to them. They adjusted after the first time through the lineup and started putting the ball in play. I felt very, very good after we got one run on the board with some quality at bats. After that, it just trickled to the rest of the hitters and they all just followed in line.
Q. How was your patience today?
A. I thought the patience at the plate was pretty deep today. Their pitchers did an outstanding job. We knew that she was an outstanding pitcher and we just had to try to shorten the strikezone for her. The people in line had to watch a little bit more what was going in front of them at the plate.
Pacific Player Adrienne Ratajczak
Q. What do you do to prepare for a typical game?
A. I got in there and think positively, be confident in myself and confident in my teammates that we're going to go out there and give it our all.
Q. What did you tell the other players regionals would be like?
A. We're just taking it one game at a time. You can't really look ahead to other teams that you're playing - our focus the whole week was Central Michigan. You've got to focus on what you have at hand. Tomorrow we play Nebraska. That's pretty much it, just one game at a time.
Pacific Player Cindy Ball
Q. How was your first postseason pitching experience?
A. It's just a normal game, and that's the way I had to look at it. Yeah, we're in the regionals and we're planing to go to the Series, but we can't change what we've been doing because we've been doing awesome.
Central Michigan Head Coach Margo Jonker
Opening Statement: This game was not indicative of how our team normally plays and neither was it the way we anticipated the way the game would go. Give credit to Cindy Ball for pitching a great game for them. There were circumstances that changed the tone of the game and different things that happened that made it into not a very good outcome. Now we have to put that game behind us and go on and play the way we have been - the way that got us here in the first place.
Q. How do you put the game behind you?
A. In softball and baseball you can't concentrate on the failures, you concentrate on how you come back. With every at bat you look at batting averages. You aren't successful 100% of the time. This is just like having a bad previous at bat. Bad game, come back from it tomorrow and be sharp. That's the plan.
Central Michigan Player Amber Puchalski
Q. How'd you feel out there today?
A. At first I felt a little shaky, but then I went out and pitched my game and just dealt with what was going on. After the first inning I was more relaxed, kept pitching and got through it.