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.