May 31, 2002

Recap |  Box Score

2002 NCAA Baseball Tournament
Ernie Shore Field - Winston-Salem, NC
Wake Forest vs. George Washington

George Washington head coach Tom Walter...

"First off, you've got to tip your hat off to Wake Forest. Kyle Sleeth came out and after giving up three runs in the second inning really settled down and didn't give much else after that. He's an All-American for a reason, and he proved that tonight. He really did a great job; he struck out 11 of us and walked none. A pretty good performance obviously, and then Bush was 'as advertised'. He came into the game; he shut us down."

On WFU's nine-run fourth inning:
"I felt like in the big inning, if we had made some plays, it probably would have been a different ball game. Against a good-hitting club like Wake Forest, you just can't afford to give away six outs in an inning and it kind of snowballed on us and we couldn't get out of the inning."

George Washington right fielder Mike Bassett...

On WFU's nine-run fourth inning:
"It took away from our momentum. We don't play as well from behind as we probably should. That definitely took our momentum away; we were flying high for the first three or four innings. Then all of a sudden momentum really shifted on us."

Wake Forest head coach George Greer...

"Greg Conden did a great job in the first few innings of getting ahead with his fastball and then getting us out with his change-up, and then he reversed it in the third inning. I think our guys made great adjustments and we started chipping away and once we start chipping away and we can run a little bit, we're pretty dangerous with men on base."

On Kyle Sleeth:
"I though Kyle was up in the zone in the first few innings. He was a little bit too pumped up; he hadn't pitched since last Wednesday in the ACC Tournament. That's a long way off for a guy that likes to throw. But then he settled down and he got the ball down. When he gets the ball down, the ball moves and he got them to swing at his pitches, rather than them swinging at their pitches."

On the crowd:
"I can't say enough about the crowd tonight; I thought the crowd was tremendous. When the crowd gets behind you like this, I think it pumps the guys up. When they start clapping and chanting 'Let's go Deacs' I feel our guys got really excited about that. When I saw Jamie D'Antona hit the ball up towards left field, I knew it was going out. So I just turned and looked at the crowd, because I wanted to see the crowd react to a homerun in baseball like they do to a dunk from Tim Duncan."

Wake Forest pitcher Kyle Sleeth...

"Today I was very happy the team won, but I was disappointed with myself a little bit. I was leaving the ball up, and those guys took advantage of it. Once I settled down a little, I started to get the ball down and moving a little bit. I was just kind of working myself out of a rut."

Wake Forest third baseman Jamie D'Antona...

On his performance in NCAA Tournaments:
"Any game I just came out to play It's just happened so far that I'm had pretty good luck the past couple of years. but tomorrow is a new day and anything can happen. We're happy for right now that we won this game. And we'll just move on."