12 Quotes by Rich Anderson

We know we're the underdogs, we have a young team. We have to come out and play. We're not going to evaluate on wins and losses, we're going to evaluate on our effort.

I think the last two games ? we lost by one run ? they didn't know how to get over the hump. They get caught in the moment. (Today) they didn't worry about the score. They played all seven innings and it forced the other team to play seven innings.

Last week we did not swing the bat well. Today we were having good at-bats. From a coaching standpoint we're swinging a lot better.

Our guys are competing now, but we just need to get over the hump. We still need to play a bit cleaner and find a way to get our offense rolling.

We haven't had any steam all year. That was our best performance by far all season. All year long we've had error-filled games. Our last two games we played much better defense. We're competing better. Nothing but a positive coming out of this game. We competed the most (of any game) and forced the other team to play.

We understand our underdog role and hopefully our players will relish the fact that other schools in our league and section see us as underdogs.

At the beginning of the year we couldn't get the big hit. Now, we've gotten some big hits and it's freed some guys up. We've tried to get them to be aggressive and attack early but they haven't done it. Today, it was nice to jump out and score some runs early instead of playing from behind.

Ryan gets a little upset when he doesn't get a hit. He's really aggressive. He'll simmer down though, he'll be fine on Thursday.

Anything higher would be quite a stretch in my mind. Essex has a fantastic track record, and most observers view them as a great management team, value-added group.