BASEBALL POSTGAME QUOTES | K-STATE Eastern Illinois 6, K-State 5 | March 6, 2021 PETE HUGHES, K-STATE HEAD COACH Opening Statement… “You dig your hole early in the game. All those runs add up. You have to try and figure out how to fight your way back, and our guys did a great job fighting their way back. They showed a lot of character, but we want to learn our lessons around here, winning not losing.When we are at home trying to win a series, we have to jump on the other team and get the lead. Credit to Eastern Illinois because they did that today. They hung on, made some big pitches and got some two out hits and we didn’t.” On the batting performance... “They would beat us on straight fastballs, which I haven’t seen in a long time. Give them credit, Nicholson was throwing a very good deceptive fastball. It wasn’t like they were staying away from us or pitching backwards. They came right at us, and that’s a lot of strikeouts (14) for a team coming at you with 80% fastball. Maybe guys trying to do too much and you get out of your mechanics when you try to do that. That’s what it looked like to me, but we have to be more mature than that with our approach and we didn’t do that enough.” On Seymour and Ford on the mound… “Carson’s whole deal was he did get some bad luck with some high chops and some defense. We have to play some better catch for Carson. I think he got into some trouble with getting a good feel with secondary pitches command wise, leaving him in fastball counts the whole game. At this level, if there is not a threat of a secondary pitch getting in the zone, you can really cheat to the fastball. They have some really experienced hitters who got some big hits for them. Even some inexperienced hitters, a freshman hit the homerun backside early on. He’s not an experienced kid but the ball was left up to the zone and anybody can cheat to the fastball without the threat of a slider or changeup. Carson looked like he struggled to get the slider in the zone consistently. Casey Ford, I thought he was awesome compared to his last outing. He made the adjustments he needed to make. He competed like crazy on both sides of the plate and a heavy sink on his two-seam. He went right at them. He gave us the chance to win that thing the last couple innings, and we just couldn’t do it for him.” On going for the series win tomorrow with McCullough on the mound… “It’s nice having a dependable, reliable guy in that Sunday spot. You’re trying to win a series or sweep a series, Connor is a great guy to have in that spot. He’s a strike thrower. He always gives you a chance. He’s not giving up free passes and free 90’s, you know? We’ll need him tomorrow, and our bullpen is fresh. Kasey allowed that to happen today. We gotta feel bad about it and make some adjustments and figure out what we did wrong. In this game, it’s a quick turnaround and our guys are pretty resilient. They’ve proven that to me already. We’ll come out tomorrow, have a good pregame and try to win a series.” .