College World Series: Pat Casey Talks What Went Wrong Against Arkansas in Game 1

Oregon State came into Tuesday night’s game hoping to go up 1-0 in their best two-of-three series with Arkansas. A few different factors got in the way of that, namely mistakes from the Beavs and a few questionable calls.

Pat Casey talked to members of the media about it following the game.

The words in bold are from members of the media in attendance.

Opening Statement

“Well, you know, we give a lot of credit to the pitching for Arkansas. I thought they threw the ball real well. The game doesn’t change. We put 10 runners on base, and that makes it difficult. Christian was outstanding. He pitched like a man, kept us right where we needed to be, and we needed to be there”

Pat, looked like Luke at least got into a good rhythm early in the game. What happened there in the middle of the game when he started to lose a little bit?

“I think that was it. He started to lose it. He didn’t throw the ball where he needed to, and it kind of -- it was -- I don’t know, I don’t have an answer for that. He’d been real good all year long, and certainly really struggled in that inning.”

The call in the fourth inning, the explanation that you got from the umpire, it seemed like you weren’t satisfied with that, and how much of a factor do you think that played?

“Yeah, I don’t agree with his explanation. It appeared Rutsch was doing everything he could to get out of the way. The ball left the guy’s hand. They weren’t near one another, so I don’t agree with the call, but I don’t -- it’s certainly not something that I’m going to say that affected us or affected the game. It certainly could have -- well, it did affect that inning. We had that run taken off the board right there, so that makes it tough. We’ve got a guy on first base with a two-run lead and one out, so everybody can look at the tape and decide for themselves what they think.”

In the bottom of the fifth, there was another play that was challenged and then overturned, and it seemed like that could have led to another run. How do you deal with the things that you can’t really control in a game like this?

“Well, it’s been difficult for us. We’ve had -- it seems there’s some things that I can’t control that haven’t gone our way, so we’ve just got to do a better job of trying to get through those things. And since we can’t control them, we’ve really just got to get to the next pitch and the next at-bat and try to handle that.”