June 19, 2012

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UCLA Head Coach John Savage
"The first thing would be just thanking the people of Omaha in terms of having the best tournament in the country. Everything that they do for the student athletes is beyond what anybody can do. I think this is the place where it should be, beautiful second year ballpark. I just cannot say thank you enough to the people, to the people inside the stadium, outside the stadium, to the restaurants, to the hotel, the bus driver, the doctors; I mean, it's an unbelievable feeling. It's an unbelievable opportunity for our program to go through. Having said that, I'm just very proud of our program. Like I said, these guys have really been taking this program to new heights. They've been in Omaha two of the last three years, they're back to back Pac 12 champions. It's an extremely difficult task. We're disappointed. We didn't play very well. I think everybody saw that. The last two games, I don't know, you can't really put your thumb on it, but Arizona was better and Florida State was better. For whatever reason, we couldn't find it. What is it? It's hard to put your thumb on it. But at the end of the day, I'm very proud of this group of players and very proud of this junior class. One of the best classes in the history of the school, period. I don't care what anybody says. They won the most games. They've taken this thing to new heights, and I'm just extremely proud. Congratulations to Coach Martin and Florida State. They were the better team, and they were the more aggressive team from the first pitch; and that's why they deserve to go on. At the end of the day, it was their night, and we'll live and learn. Like I told the returning players, this is the goal. Know this feeling. Know how hard it takes to get here and ultimately to win it. We're excited about where we are, and certainly very disappointed with how the finish was."

(on the team's pitching tonight): "Yeah, well, four runs. You can talk about the walks, but it's four runs. I don't think we've walked that many in quite a while. That's certainly not playoff pitching. Zack got off to a rough start, but we gave up four runs, so I don't know. We pitched out of some problems. A little magic, I guess. But it wasn't certainly how we drew it up. But at the end of the day, we stayed in the game."

(on Florida State's approach at the plate): "I give them a ton of credit. That's why you see 50 walks, 60 walks. I mean, they don't chase. You know, we weren't in the zone, and that's a lethal combination. I'll tell you what. Johnson played like a senior. I mean, he was the best player on the field tonight. I mean, really good at bats. He had a couple of 0 2 at bats that he's got on. I credit them a lot. They schooled some of our younger guys in my opinion, Weiss, and Watson a little bit. Not in a negative way. I'm not saying in a negative way that we were it's just that older hitters from Travis to Boyd to Ramsey to Johnson, they kind of got the better of the younger guys in my opinion, and that was the difference in the game."

(on Scott Sitz): "The breaking ball is pretty good. He definitely went there on the bases loaded where he struck out the three guys. Florida State has always done a good job of throwing the breaking ball in any count. And tonight we saw that. I think he commanded his fastball enough. For whatever reason, we could not get good swings off them. It was a lot like the other night. It was just frustration and poor swings. But, you know, at the same time, these guys had a hell of a year, our guys I'm talking about, offensively. They got on base all year long. I think we'd all agree that for whatever reason, the last two games it just didn't happen. You've got to give the opponent a lot of credit as well."

(on how the pitching staff grew over the season): "Well, we had talented arms, and they evolved into winners, from Vander Tuig, to Plutko, to Watson, to Griggs. I'm just so proud of those guys. Because it was the Cole and Bauer show in terms of a lot of people's minds, but there were a lot of people around them that were very talented that sometimes didn't get the baseball. I think if you talk to these national guys and follow college baseball day in and day out, saying that UCLA wouldn't win the Pac-12 again. I think we were predicted to finish third. To be back in Omaha minus Cole and Bauer, almost winning 50 games, to play the strength of schedule that we played, I'd give pretty high marks to the players and the job that they did. It's certainly disappointing. We were on the track, and we got off the track the last two days. It's disappointing. But this team had a remarkable year, and I'm very proud to be their coach, and certainly I think we surprised you'd have to ask these guys if surprise is the right word. But I don't think they expected us to have the type of year that we had."

UCLA Outfielder Beau Amaral
(on what went wrong the last two games): "Offensively these last two games we didn't play how we played all year. We didn't adjust to pitching the way we should have, and things just didn't work out for us. When we did score balls, it was always at somebody. Tip our hat to Florida State. They were the better team tonight."

(on not being able to come through in the sixth inning): "We've got to tip our hat to their pitcher. He was in a tight spot, and we had our opportunity to kind of get back in the game. We got one run, but he definitely shut us down and made some good pitches against us."

UCLA First Baseman Trevor Brown
(on what went wrong the last two games): "We were a little out of character. It was a combination of guys just wanting to do too much and want to go play as well as they can, and getting a little out of character and maybe a little impatient. But they were the better team."

(on not being able to come through in the sixth inning): "It was tough. Right when we felt we had that mojo going our way, and we got guys on and Keef had that hit with the bases loaded. We all felt like it was going to be a big inning. Like I said, we all got a little out of character and got a little too excited. We weren't as patient as we should have been at the plate."