MESSIAH POST-GAME QUOTES:

Head Coach Amy Weaver on the 19 strikeout performance by freshman right-hander Jessica Rhoads: “Jess just pitched incredible today – 19 strikeouts and only two hits, one on a bunt. She has taken it up a notch every day. She just pitched incredible. I don’t know how you can pitch any better than that.”

Weaver on Rhoads’ game-winning two-run home run in the first inning: “I just had a feeling that she was going to get a good hit. I didn’t know that it was going to be a home run, but she got a good look at the ball and hit it solid. The wind was blowing out, and it just took off.”

Rhoads on how she felt prior to the game after logging every inning for Messiah in its first two contests: “Before the game I was having trouble getting loose, so we went and put heat on my arm. After that, my arm was as loose as it could be.”

Rhoads on whether she was able to exploit a certain weakness in the Coe line-up: “Their bats seemed a little slow. That’s what I noticed. They just weren’t catching up on the pitches. I was expecting them to move back in the batter’s box, but they never did.”

Weaver on whether she feels her squad is a team of destiny: “I feel that everyone on this team knows their role and everyone fills in where they need to. It doesn’t matter what, where, why or when. Whether it’s a pinch hit or other pitchers stepping up when Jess got hurt, people have just stepped in and done the absolute best that they can. We tell them all of the time that that’s all that we ask. It just seems to be working, so I’m pretty excited about it.”

Rhoads on how she ended up attending Messiah: “I was recruited by a Division I school [the University of Hartford], but right before I left, my dad got really sick. I saw him two weeks after he had gone into the hospital, and he had lost 50 pounds, so I decided that I was coming home. Messiah is right down the road [from my home] and Coach Weaver had been recruiting me when I was in high school. Messiah is where I wanted to be right away. She helped me get my fourth year of eligibility [restored by the NCAA], and it was all because of her hard work. Knowing that she was willing to do that for me really made me want to play for Messiah even more. [Assistant Coach] Alex [Quigley] was my pitching coach in high school, so everything pointed toward going to Messiah.”

Weaver on whether she remembered receiving the call from Rhoads telling her she wanted to play at Messiah: “She didn’t call me right away. When she came home [from Hartford], she actually came out and watched one of our games. To be truthful, she was still kind of shell-shocked because her dad was really sick and in the hospital. We actually didn’t even talk to her for a while. I could tell that she was very distraught with the whole situation with her father. She sat out a year and went to community college and helped out at home with her father. We actually didn’t talk to her until later in the year.”

Weaver on how it feels to be one win away from her program’s first National Championship: “We’ve been to the National Championship a couple of times, but never got this far, so we’re pretty excited about it.”

Weaver on the fact that her team only generated three hits offensively: “We only had a couple of hits, but we look at the whole at-bat, and we had some kids hit the ball solid even though they were foul balls or balls that were caught. If we’re making solid contact, we feel good about that. The pitching is going to be tough at this point. Not everyone is going to go 2-for-3 like you might during the regular season.”

Weaver on the pitching performance by Coe freshman Ashlee Simon: “She was a good pitcher. She had our hitters swinging at the rise ball. I kept telling our players not to swing at [the rise ball], but they were, so she just kept throwing it. That’s to her credit.”

COE POST-GAME QUOTES:

Head Coach Bob Timmons on the pitching performance by Messiah freshman right-hander Jessica Rhoads: “I just want to compliment her. She threw a heck of a ballgame against us today. We were one strike away from getting out of that first inning, and if we get that strike we might still be playing. [Freshman right-hander] Ashlee [Simon] threw a good ballgame, and [Rhoads] did a tremendous job. I thought we tried to make some adjustments on her. We had some called third strikes in the first inning, and after that she kept throwing it by us and we kept swinging at it. We didn’t put the ball in play with any authority at all.”

Timmons on whether Coe tried anything offensively to break the momentum of Rhoads: “We tried to lay down a bunt and we tried to move around in the box a little bit on her. We couldn’t just take pitches because she was always around the plate. I told my players to keep swinging and hopefully we’ll put it in play somewhere, but obviously we didn’t.”

Timmons on the pitching performance of Coe freshman right-hander Ashlee Simon: “Ashlee did a great job and threw a good ballgame. She got them popping up quite a bit, and she got quite a few ground ball outs. We didn’t answer the bell in terms of putting up runs on the board in the first inning like they did. Other than that, it was a great ballgame thrown by Ashlee. But you don’t win many when you don’t put any runs up.”

Simon on her limiting Messiah to just three hits in a losing effort: “I don’t think I gave my best performance. I’m usually a little shaky in the first inning, and I wish I could take [the home run] pitch back, but I couldn’t. After the first inning, I told myself that I can either shut down or keep going after them. So I just went out with that mentality.”

Timmons on how Messiah’s Rhoads compares to the other pitchers his team has faced this season: “She’s the best pitcher that I’ve seen this year. She might be the best pitcher that I’ve seen in 24 years of coaching. She never got herself in trouble. Like I said about our performance, we were swinging at it, but we just couldn’t make contact. We had very few foul balls, and we were just swinging at air. She had great command and movement today and we just couldn’t put it in play. It was an outstanding performance on her behalf.”

Timmons on whether he is concerned about his team’s offensive performance in its first three games: “We have put the ball in play pretty good here other than today. In the other two ballgames, we didn’t strike out often, but we hit the ball right at people. I can’t be unhappy about it because we just haven’t put the ball in play at the right time.”

Timmons on how his team can rebound after this defeat: ”We’ve been in this position before. We’re in the losers bracket, and we have to win one tomorrow to have a chance to come back and see what we can do. As I told our team, we’ll see what we’re made of. Our preparation between now and tomorrow’s game will determine what we’re going to do. We can dwell on this and let it hurt us, or we can go watch [the Tufts-Gustavus Adolphus game] and see what we need to do against those two teams. We have to get ourselves in the mindset to play two ballgames tomorrow.”

Simon on Coe being one of the three teams still remaining in the tournament: “Regardless of what happens, we’re one of the top three teams in the nation, so that feels pretty good.”