Postgame Quotes - vs. Creighton

Feb. 22, 2011

Recap |

Kansas Head Coach Ritch Price

On Alex Cox:

“For his first start, I was pleased. I thought he did a nice job of attacking the hitters and locating the ball down. He was able to mix up his pitches and I thought it was a very good outing for him, especially when he pitched on Saturday. We were going to be careful with his pitch-count with bouncing back on two days rest.”

On bringing in T.J. Walz:

“There’s no doubt we wanted to win the game, we had a chance to get back to .500 and be in really great shape after opening up at TCU. We had opportunities to pad the 3-0 lead early in the game and we basically ran ourselves right out of the (fourth) inning by getting picked off at second with nobody out. We can’t make those mistakes right now, with all the young guys we have playing and all the new guys we have on the field, our margin of error is very small right now. I thought we made three or four really bad mental mistake that cost us a one run loss.”

On losing after beating TCU:

“Obviously it’s the opposite end of the spectrum. We were as emotionally high as you could be on Sunday after pulling that one out against TCU. Today is obviously a huge let-down and there are a lot of disappointed guys in the locker room right now.”

On second baseman Kaiana Eldredge:

“He’s just to get some game reps and relax and play. He’s got tremendous talent. I was thrilled with the way he caught the ball behind the plate. He throws better than anybody in our program and there are going to be times later in the year when we play teams with tremendous speed and he will need to catch. That’s the first game he’s caught since he’s been here so I was thrilled with his performance behind the plate. I know how good he is offensively, but it’s like I told the guys, we’ve only played four games. You can go out this weekend and get two hits in two games and have your average over .300. Certainly he’s got to keep his head up and keep working and we’ve got to keep running him out there when he gets it going.”

Kansas outfielder Casey Lytle

On the low scoring game:

“We’ve faced TCU and Creighton and they’ve got some great arms. Seeing some of the best arms to start the season is a great way to prepare us. We didn’t have the best offensive performance, but we had guys on base and we had some opportunities to score. We just made some mental mistakes when we were on base and it ended up biting us in the butt in the end.”

On the new turf:

“There are no bad hops. The only difference you feel is when it rains, it gets a little more slick. You just have to slide a little bit earlier. It’s great, you can get on the field right after it rains and you can just clear off the snow and you’re ready to go. It really has been great.”

Kansas starting pitcher Alex Cox

On his first start:

“I wasn’t that nervous but I think the excitement of my first college start got to me a little bit. I was having fun out there, obviously I didn’t execute the way I wanted to. Coach (Price) said I did well for my first start, but I will have to continue to work hard and see if I can go farther in games and help our bullpen out and give us a better chance to win.”

On what he takes away from the game:

“Obviously I didn’t do as well as I hoped. There’s always going to be room for improvement no matter what happens. I need to attack more and throw more strikes. I need to be able to throw more than one or two pitches for strikes.”