Softball vs. Baylor Quotes

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On what the message was to her team:
“I don't think we can brush it off. We have to learn from it like any tough loss. There are valuable lessons that we learned tonight, some that I definitely wouldn't say out loud, but just in that locker room. The message has been received by the team. We missed some big opportunities tonight to lead off the series with a win. This is Big 12 Championship play that's happening here, along with the opportunity to showcase your program across the country, and we got absolutely owned. There's no other way to say it. Kelsey Arnold and our defense were making some big plays, but Paige (Parker) wasn't on. The offense wasn't on. Another highlight to me was Kelsey Stevens coming in and getting outs. That's big for us. Anybody would think that's routine, but those are big steps for us. We can find a few big things. But we can just flat out say that Baylor was a better team tonight.”

On the pitching:
“It was very important [to get Kelsey Stevens work], but it was very unfortunate that it happened in those circumstances. When you know that nothing is working then you have to use that as an opportunity for, can Leslie (Miller) come in and throw some innings and give us some ground balls? Base on balls will come back and absolutely haunt us. If someone is going to get something off us then they have to earn it. Base on balls come around and score. Everybody knows that. I'd rather have a team absolutely earn it than give them anything. We're better than that. We have to try to find some nice pieces out of the game. That's all that we can do, just learn. This team will come out and be ready to go tomorrow.”

On Paige Parker and the team's pitching strategy:
“Paige (Parker) has been so phenomenal and tonight she would admit to you that she wasn't as good as she's been. She'll admit that to you. It didn't make sense to keep her out there when we're down 4-0 and the offense is just not clicking, to extend Paige and allow them to see her more. Paige is going to come back and she's going to deal the way she deals. We know that. Could Leslie (Miller) give us some quality outs? Yes. We're trying to see where everyone else could go. We certainly don't want to show our hand with Shelby (Pendley). That didn't make sense unless our offense was going to catch on fire. You could just feel. (Heather) Stearns was really, really good tonight. She had us handcuffed."

Shelby Pendley
On what Heather Stearns was throwing:
“Everything I saw was a backdoor curve. She threw well. She mixed it up a lot. She got us tonight.”

On what was happening for her at the plate:
“I think we were just fooling ourselves. Some of us perceived it as hard and some of us didn't. It was just different.”

On what the team learned in the game:
“I think we're really going to take tonight as a lesson learned and use it as a feeder for tomorrow just to come back and really jump on it right away. I think we're going to study some video and get on top of that and figure out how to hit her.”