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Ohio State vs. Michigan Game Quotes
May 24, 2007
Ohio State Head Coach Bobb Todd On pitcher Jake Hale ... "Outstanding performance. You take a look at what he did, he mixed up three pitches, I thought his most effective pitch early was not only his change-up, and about halfway through the game, he had to switch and I thought his slider became much more effective. He just kept all the hitters off balance." On beating Michigan ... "... the thing I felt sorry about were the players who hadn't beat Michigan this year, they've done that now. I think more from the standpoint that our players feel a sense of satisfaction." On no errors by the OSU defense ... "It's a big thing, not only that we didn't make errors but we got a complete game." Ohio State Pitcher Jake Hale On his performance ... "I threw five pitches for strikes. I kept everything in the zone, located my fastball really well. The guys were standing on the plate, I could get in and jam them. ... I didn't let them get their arms extended because that's what they really want to do." On the pitches he used aside from the fastball, slider and change-up ... "I had the sidearm slider and the overhand curve." On beating Michigan ... "It was all determination. I was not going to let them beat us five times this year ... last year I faced them twice, they got two dinker hits to win the game but this year, me and coach, we talked about instead of letting them protect the plate with the sliders, I started going with the fastball more."
On tonight's game play ... " It's one of those where we never got the crowd into the game, because they got the three runs in the first. Its kind of like one of those strange games in a sense that we had I don't know how many guys left on, a lot, and we couldn't get that hit to get the momentum on our side. Some days the balls fall through, and some days they don't.. We had a couple of innings there where I thought we hit the ball pretty good and didn't get anything to show for it. In (Ohio State's) particular case those balls were going up the middle and they were finding those holes. You have to give them credit. They scrapped away those three in the first and it really took any atmosphere out of the game and we never could get it back. We never could get big momentum on our side. It was unfortunate, but it was baseball. On having to come out of the losers' bracket -- similar to last year ... "This is a bigger mountain than last year because last year Northwestern had lost its first game and we only had to win four games. This year we have to play five to win this year, so we have a bigger mountain to climb. The flip side of that is we have to take it one game at a time and just win. The bats get hot as the tournament goes on. It can go up for grabs and it can be anybody's tournament. We didn't use a lot of pitching tonight either. But it's a huge mountain and a lot of baseball to play in a short period of time. I told the guys that we have to just try and beat Penn State -- that's what we have to do." On scoring just two runs on 11 hits ... "I think you have to give Ohio State credit. (OSU pitcher Jake Hale) pitched really well. When he got in jams he came up with a big pitch. We call it making plays, he made the pitches. You have to give him a lot of credit. We didn't execute in the situations when we could have driven guys in. We didn't get the big hit. During the course of the season you have games like that, but unfortunately it came at this time. One or two hits together would have probably gotten the momentum on our side. It just never came." Michigan Sophomore Pitcher Zach Putnam On tonight's loss ... "I think Ohio State beat us on the intensity. They came out and were just fired up. I give their guys credit. They played errorless ball and made some big plays. I thought Jake (Hale) threw a great game for them. At the end of the day the ball kind of bounced their way." On bouncing back to play Penn State early tomorrow ... "The bottom line is we've been here before. This is a familiar feeling for us. It's not a good feeling, but last year was the same situation. We just have to battle all the way through." Michigan Sophomore Third Baseman Adam Abraham On the impact his homerun had on the team ... "I was hoping that it would give us a little bit of a lift. Doug (Pickens) got a hit on the next pitch. Then on the hit-and-run right after that (Derek VanBuskirk) hit a line drive right at the third baseman (resulting in a double play). That kind of stuff just happened tonight."
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