BASEBALL POSTGAME QUOTES | K-STATE K-State 2, Western Michigan 1 | February 28, 2021
PETE HUGHES, K-STATE HEAD COACH Opening Statement… “It was a good win. I thought our guys came out and took a good pregame. I thought their approach was really good. It was a really tough offensive day with the wind blowing in. We picked our spots. We knew it would be a tight game because of the conditions. McCullough did a good job keeping them off balance. threw a lot of strikes with his secondary stuff. We had good senior leadership with Caleb Littlejim coming in and getting two big ground ball double plays. I thought Caleb played well all weekend defensively, offensively and then obviously coming in there at the end of the game. Good weekend to build on. Some areas we have to clean up to get Big 12 ready, but there’s nothing like learning lessons through winning.”
On McCullough’s performance… “The breaking ball was the great equalizer for him today to keep people off his fastball. He did a really good job of spotting his fastball on both sides of the plate, but it was the breaking ball. It’s a true curveball. You don’t see it much in college baseball. Usually you just see fastball and slider. The true curveball gave them a different look. His ability to throw that for a strike in all counts is what kept those guys off balance today.”
On the defensive performance… “It’s great to get those double plays. They take momentum, and momentum comes back in your dugout in one play. I thought we did a good job. We dropped a popup yesterday, but overall, I thought we played a pretty high standard of clean defense. Cam Thompson made a great play today and made it look easy for another double play. That’s the standard we have to be at defensively. It keeps our pitch count down and our arms fresh. It’s clean baseball, and I’m pretty happy with the defense right now.”
CONNOR MCCULLOUGH, FRESHMAN PITCHER On what worked for him today… “I didn’t have my off speed working much at all pretty much the whole game. We just pounded fastball. The other team was sitting soft the first couple of innings. They weren’t expecting fastball in counts I was up in. I just tried to locate the fastball, and I had some good plays behind me. I was able to make a couple more mistakes today with the wind. The wind knocked them down, which helped out a lot too.”
On the experience in the bullpen… “It’s awesome, and not just the bullpen. We know we can have any guy on our team come in and pitch. We can let guys hit the ball and we have a defense behind us that’s going to make plays for us regardless. It’s also us having confidence in them that allows us to have confidence.”
On the pitching staff this weekend… “We made a big jump from last weekend. The bullpen struggled a little bit last weekend. This weekend, we came out and threw strikes, tried to eliminate leadoff runners on base, and they did a good job with that.”
DANIEL CARINCI, SOPHOMORE DH On getting out of the slump today… “It was great. The team has been rolling a little bit, and I wanted to do my part today. It was good to get on base a couple of times and help the team get the offense going.”
On the offensive identity… “It’s no quit. If we’re down four or five runs in any given game, we have the power and ability to come back. Every at bat, we go up there fighting. There’s no quit in this team.”
On starting pitching… “It’s awesome. We can go out there and have bad days and we know they’re going to be on the mound giving their best effort, so when we struggle they can pick us up sometimes. It’s big.”