bleedCrimson.net Weekly Coach Ward Interview

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie baseball head coach Rocky Ward throughout the 2008 season as the Aggies open their third season in the WAC. This week Coach Ward talks about getting a split in Fresno against the league leaders, talks about sustaining momentum over the final two weeks and heading into the conference tournament and the importance of playing their final two series at home.

bleedCrimson.net: Talk a little bit about this past weekend's series with Fresno State? You got exactly what you needed with the split and came really close to winning all four.
Rocky Ward: It was a good weekend. We got momentum out of the Sacramento weekend and kids were feeling good about themselves. We've gotten good pitching, our defense has still got some cracks just not quite as big. We've swung the bats. As an offensive team we seem to have found the confidence and kids are starting to get it. They're starting to understand how important every single pitch is and guys are going to the plate and battling every pitch. We've benefitted from it. It's a big deal. [Tyler] Sturdevant did not throw well on Friday and we still had a chance to win it. They had to bring Sunday's starter [Tanner Scheppers] in to close that game. We took them right to the edge and looking back to it you kinda go "Geez, if we'd just a normal start that we'd normally get from Sturdevant, we'd have won that one."

Then you get a great start out of [Heath] Goin and really an outstanding offensive day in game one of the doubleheader. We just kept coming at them. We'd score, take an inning off then score, take an inning off then score again. It's one of those things we'd struggled with at times during the year, early in the year, we'd score early then we wouldn't score much late once we got into a little bit of pressure. We didn't let that happen to us. Part of that is the fact that as you move on through the year, guys trust Heath to keep us in the game. Not only did he keep us in the game, he pitched very well, shut down a very good offense.

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie baseball head coach Rocky Ward throughout the 2008 season as the Aggies open their third season in the WAC. This week Coach Ward talks about last week's conference sweep of Sacramento State, what it means for his club and what they need to do entering the final three weeks of the season.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about your thoughts overall from the Sacramento series.
Rocky Ward: Overall, Sacramento was a place that doesn't have real good history with us and not just a place but the team. We haven't done real well there and that's one of those teams that on paper you feel like you should beat. It goes all the way back to the Big West days. The first thing you figured you had to be able to do was beat Sacramento in the league and then you could start working on Santa Barbara, Cal-Poly and Pacific. We actually did pretty well against those three guys but could win against Sacramento and that's what kept us from getting over the top. Two years ago Sacramento came into our place and swept us at home and pretty much took our chances of a conference tournament [appearance] out of the mix and then we went there last year and lost three and that signified lost chances. There were a lot of negative traditions that were overcome by the weekend.

We had the two games with Texas Tech which were both difficult games to play because they were kind of meaningless to both teams, both of us are struggling in league. We played okay, we just didn't play very good defense in both of those games but we swung the bats pretty well and that might have got us moving offensively again. Looking it back it served a purpose.

The first game against Sacramento we got a very good outing out of [Tyler] Sturdevant, we did not play very good defense. In fact, we won that one 7-4 and as far as I'm concerned, their official scorer is nuts. I don't think a single run was earned, everything the guy thought was a hit. Even that we made two erros but in the game we could have been charged with as many as six. But we were able to still pitch around it and win.

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie baseball head coach Rocky Ward throughout the 2008 season as the Aggies open their third season in the WAC. This week Coach Ward talks about last week's disappointing series against Fresno State, looks ahead at a very tough week traveling to Lubbock, TX, Roswell, N.M. and Sacramento, CA in a three day span, and talks about his kids' performance against Top 10 pro prospect Tanner Scheppers.

bleedCrimson.net: Talk a about the weekend series with Fresno State. In the Friday night game you put up a good fight, how much did that game have an effect on what happened with the rest of the series?
Rocky Ward: I think had an effect in the fact that Fresno got off to a good start offensively. The one achilles heel for them has been their offense. They've been either really really good or really really bad, there's not much in between with those guys. Unfortunately they were really really good all weekend.

Combined with a pretty average or below average performance from my pitching staff, we walked a bunch of guys, didn't have very good command and we built a lot of innings for them. We didn't make them earn a lot of stuff that they got. Once they got going, once we walked a guy or hit a guy, then they'd finish it with base hits. We seemed to consistently provide them with opportunities throughout the weekend and they got on a roll and we couldn't get them stopped. So yeah, game on impacted it that way.

I think to put up 10 runs against that pitching staff was quite an accomplishment. It was a normal day, it wasn't a windy day, it was light winds under 5 mph throughout the game. The score wasn't high because of the wind. Both offenses did a pretty good job and they took advantage of most every mistake.

Fresno came in hot and they've now won nine or ten conference games in a row and their offense, if you go back and look at the numbers the past two or three weeks, their offense has scored a lot of runs.

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie baseball head coach Rocky Ward throughout the 2008 season as the Aggies open their third season in the WAC. This week Coach Ward talks about last week's games in Hawai'i and looks ahead at this week's games against Panhandle State and the very important series against Fresno State. He also talks mental drain that the compressed schedule puts on student athletes.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about the game against Hawai'i-Pacific?
Rocky Ward: We played under tough conditions. Their field was a natural grass field unlike the other eight games we played that were on the field turf material. They had rain and so it was pretty slick in a lot of spots. We kind of caught a bad break because Dixie State was supposed to go in there and play on the weekend as part of a series for them. Because of ATA Airlines going under, that's who Dixie was scheduled to travel with and they couldn't rebook fights. So their series was cancelled and instead of facing their [HPU] number six pitcher we faced their number one, number two and number three. They just took all of them and shared the game and they were pretty dadgum good. They had a left-hander that was in the low 90's with a good breaking ball. Then a right-hander came in that was a high 80's guy with a real good slider. I knew they had a pretty good club and I knew they had those two kids that really had good numbers. We did a good job against them. We got a home run out of [Geoff] Downing that was a key blow. Their shortstop had a tough game, he made three errors that led to a couple different runs. Again we couldn't close it out in the bullpen. Of course it was a game we really had to be careful who we were going to use because we were going to play four games in the next three games against Hawai'i in conference. Bottom line is they tied it in the ninth, we avoided losing it there, we came back with one in the tenth, held them in the bottom of the tenth and won a 6-5 game. It was a good baseball game under tough conditions and the kids did well.

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie baseball head coach Rocky Ward throughout the 2008 season as the Aggies open their third season in the WAC. This week Coach Ward recaps the last week's games against CSU-Pueblo and Nevada and looks ahead at this week's games against Hawai'i-Pacific and Hawai'i and talks about the keys to winning this weekend's series against Hawai'i.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk a little bit about this last week's games against CSU-Pueblo and the weekend series against Nevada?
Rocky Ward: The games against Pueblo were kind of a microcosm of what we've done. You win easily and then lose easily. Those two games were more about getting some kids healthy. Stout didn't play in that series, Hardt played a little bit but sparingly. We were trying to get some of our depth developed a little bit and at the same time give a couple kids on the mound a chance, who haven't pitched very well and give them a chance to get some activity. They were specifically scheduled for that. You kind of expect to win them both but Pueblo played good baseball in the second game and did a good job against us and you tip your hat to them.

As far as the Nevada series we got a great pitching performance out of [Tyler] Sturdevant in game one and scored enough to win. We actually had an outstanding performance out of [Heath] Goin, not quite as good as Sturdevant. We just were not very good in the doubleheader against Nevada, offensively. They played very very good defense. They made three or four really critical defensive plays on the plus side, stopped a couple of our offensive innings and gave them some momentum. Goin went eight innings and gave up seven earned runs, you look at the game and say well he didn't play real well, he kinda did. Once they got on top the wind was blowing and it was cold and the conditions were not very good. They happened to be the team to get a couple balls up in the air into the jetstream, we just couldn't get that done. Then Vendette pitched outstandingly in game three and the bullpen failed us. We got a five two lead in the eight and we give up a big seven spot in the bottom of the eighth inning. Again you've gotta give some credit to Nevada. Nevada's a very difficult team to play on the road. They've a very good home team, they always have been. They have very nice crowds, they have good expectations.

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie baseball head coach Rocky Ward throughout the 2008 season as the Aggies open their third season in the WAC. This week Coach Ward recaps the last week's up and down performances and looks ahead at this week's games against CSU-Pueblo and Nevada.

bleedCrimson.net: Can talk about this last week, you had kind of an up and down strange week. You won 15-2 over UNM on Tuesday, then lost 13-1 to UNM on Wednesday, then you come back and win 12-2 on Friday against Texas-Pan American, then lose 10-3 on Saturday and then come back and win 24-5 yesterday.
Rocky Ward: Well that's kind of the essence of the week, it was inconsistent as can be. The good thing about it is really for this five game stretch we've shown our top side of what we're gonna be able to do offensively. We've also shown the weakness that we may have some down days. I don't really want to be a momentum offense, I want to be an offense that can build innings and finish them. I don't want to feel like the only way we score is if somebody hits a home run and gives you momentum. That's the only real concern I have is we kind of did that. When we got down a little bit, we couldn't get the offense moving when we needed to. Good quality offensive clubs, they may get your for three or four innings like Pan American did against us on Saturday where basically nobody scored through four, and we've still did a good job with their guy, we just couldn't get a key basehit. But when they scored all of the sudden the offense couldn't get moving. That's the only real concern with it. But you know you win 3 out of 5 and we're starting to feel like we win a couple more than we lose. Up until this little stretch we'd played on the bottom side of it a little bit. It's been a club that has done exactly that, we're 12-12 and we've played 12-12. We've played about 12 real good games and about 12 average games, average or bad depending on which ones you're talking about.

Overall to be honest I think the week was a pretty decent week for us. Did we reach the ultimate goals? No. But I think the guys are starting to think that we can do that. The schedule up until Pan Am was a pretty difficult schedule. It's ranked in the Top 50 in the strength of schedule on WarrenNolan.com and strength of schedule is one of those things like RPI it's based on what your opponents did. Pan Am was the first lower power rated club, it's the first one in the bottom 150. Everybody else had been in the Top 150 or Top 100. We did on Friday and Sunday what we should have done and Saturday you kind of wonder where things went. We didn't do either thing very good. We didn't pitch real well and didn't hit real well.

The overall feeling with the club is that we're getting better every day. Now we're gaining a little more confidence. Every time that Sturdevant and Goin went to the mound, they really pitched well. Vendette pitched well through four [innings] and then kind of lost it in the fifth and sixth.

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie baseball head coach Rocky Ward throughout the 2008 season as the Aggies open their third season in the WAC. This week Coach Ward recaps the New Mexico doubleheader last week and the conference series win over San Jose State, looks ahead at this week's games and talks about Franky Busani being named WAC Hitter of the Week.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about Franky Busani's WAC Hitter of the Week award?
Rocky Ward: Franky was a kid that is a big right-handed hitting outfielder. He didn't play real good defense for us early in the year and didn't swing the bat real well so he didn't get as much playing time. He's worked his tail off as a defender. We had a chance to get him a start against New Mexico on Wednesday, he swung the bat well and played good defense. He's just one of those kids that's worked his way back to the top. Sometimes with players, you end up with a better player in the long run if they struggle a little bit at this level and kind of get a little more of an appreciation of what you have to do in practice to maintain a high level of play.

The end result of his work is that he had a great weekend against San Jose State, in three starts he had a couple doubles, a couple home runs and all of which were really very meaningful hits at the time. Three of the four, the doubles and one of the home runs were nail in the coffin type hits. They solidified the wins in all of those cases. He's well deserving, it's surprising a little bit that he got it, Nevada swung the bat great this weekend against La. Tech in a four game sweep at home this weekend. As coaches we don't get a chance to see what the other kids did. We turn in our kid for the week and the league office chooses from there. He was well deserving and I'm happy that he got it.

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie baseball head coach Rocky Ward throughout the 2008 season as the Aggies open their third season in the WAC. This week Coach Ward recaps the Pepsi Johnny Quik Tournament in Fresno and talks about this week's games against Rio Grande Rival UNM and opening the conference season against San Jose State.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk a little bit about last week's tournament overall?
Rocky Ward: Overall the competition was good and it was a unique format because you played Monday through Saturday, six days in a row. Pitching rotations were all kind of messed up. Indiana came in and played two games against Fresno before the tournament and Indiana and Gonzaga had played games before the tournament so everybody came in on different rotations. When you look at the game scores there were a lot of unbalanced games scores based on pitching mismatches that you wouldn't normally see in a conference weekend where generally ones are against ones and four are against fours. So it was kind of a first time for me to deal with that. I know when we go back and look at it, we probably drew the toughest pitchers in the tournament. We faced Portland's #1, we faced Indiana's #1 and #2, Utah's #1 and Fresno's #3. I don't think we faced anybody that wasn't one of the top three pitchers from an opponent. I don't know if that was done purposely or if it was just random, probably a little bit of both. Overall in the tournament we swung the bats reasonably well and averaged about 7 or 8 runs per game, we didn't swing them great, we were okay. We didn't pitch well at all and we didn't play very good defense at key times.

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie baseball head coach Rocky Ward throughout the 2008 season as the Aggies open their third season in the WAC. This week Coach Ward recaps the wild series against Ball State, talks about the Alumni game on Saturday and takes a look at next week's six games in Fresno for the Pepsi Johnny Quik tournament.

Also See: Gary and Rocky Ward talk with bleedCrimson.net about the College Baseball Hall of Fame

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about this weekend's series and then we'll talk about each game individually.
Rocky Ward: The series as a whole was maybe the craziest weekend I've ever played. I thought last weekend there were a lot of runs scored against New Orleans but you look up, the average score per team is 15. The average game score if you put it all together is 16-15 for all four days. That's kind of crazy. Our offensive ballclub is proving to be dominant. Now, nobody averages 15 runs per game, the offensive conditions were prime, the humidity levels were down and the wind blew pretty hard on Sunday. There was a light breeze on Saturday that impacted the games, the only normal game was the 8-7 game on Friday.

bleedCrimson.net spoke with Class of 2008 College Baseball Hall of Fame Inductee Gary Ward and his son and head coach of the Aggie baseball team Rocky Ward on Wednesday evening. Gary Ward will be enshrined in the College Baseball Hall of Fame on July 4th in Lubbock, TX as part of the College Baseball Foundation's annual celebration of both the past and present of college baseball.

Coach Ward will also be honored at halftime of tonight's NMSU/San Jose State men's basketball game at the Pan American Center in Las Cruces, N.M.

Click the play button to listen to the audio.