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NCAA MEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIES

June 16, 2015

OMAHA, NEBRASKA

LSU 5 - CS-Fullerton 3

THE MODERATOR: Representing Cal State Fullerton, head coach Rick Vanderhook, starting pitcher Connor Seabold and designated hitter David Olmedo-Barrera. Coach, if you'll begin with an opening statement.

COACH VANDERHOOK: We got beat. That's the way I look at it. We didn't lose. We got beat. We came out and put a little charge on them. And then kind of died offensively. And they had one inning where they did about the same thing but extended a little longer. So we played two games here and didn't lose one. We got beat twice. And I can live with that. We didn't beat ourselves at all. They were more physical than us. So we've talked about that a little bit. We need to change a few things. But flat out, LSU beat us.

THE MODERATOR: Questions?

Q. Rick, what kind of problems or challenges does Bregman, for LSU, present especially moving him to the top of the lineup like they did? He had a good day, got on base a lot to start some innings off?
COACH VANDERHOOK: He got on base I think the first four times up. I think Paul put him there because he's not had a very good postseason to try to get him to let it go a little bit early. He presents problems. He gets on the base, creates havoc. But I don't think he hurt us. He didn't do anything in my opinion to hurt us. It was the other guys in the middle of the order that did some damage as we were going trying to get that thing stopped. But he's a good player.

Q. So you guys played two SEC powers. Played them tough. Lost both games. How do you guys measure your club against those clubs? What do you think Fullerton needs to do differently in the future to win those games instead of getting beat, as Coach said?
DAVID OLMEDO-BARRERA: I think like Coach said we need to get more physical, just standing on the line next to those guys, there's an obvious difference. You guys probably all see it. And so that's something that we're really going to work on next year for sure. And I really think we went toe to toe with those guys, though. Being from the Big West, not the powerhouse SEC like you call it, I thought we handled our own.

CONNOR SEABOLD: I agree. If there's anywhere where we need to improve for next year it's physicality. That's about it. That's the way I feel.

Q. David, you guys jumped on Lange pretty good there in the first inning, and then, of course, everything kind of shifted. How were you able to get to him early, and what happened differently after that?
DAVID OLMEDO-BARRERA: Fastballs. That's what he threw in the beginning. We were really committed to that. After that, I think we got away from it a little bit when he started throwing more off-speed. We chased it. And none of it was really for a strike. Kind of chased it and I mean, I know I did and some of my teammates did as well. They just stayed with their approach better than we did today.

Q. Could you talk about the shifts that your team has gone through in these last couple of games? It seemed like you had one bad inning a lot of times when the other team was able to capitalize and things just switched so quickly?
DAVID OLMEDO-BARRERA: I think that's just baseball. It's a game of momentum. And when a team can get momentum and they run with it, it can be a dangerous thing. I think that's just happened to us at times.

Q. Connor, did the LSU lineup just start to figure you out in the third inning, or was it they just jumped on some pitches after they had seen you a couple times?
CONNOR SEABOLD: I think they jumped on some pitches. I didn't have my best stuff today. I was having trouble finding the strike zone. Couldn't get out pitches down in the zone. They were taking advantage of the mistakes I made and they did a good job of that.

Q. Coach, going into the first inning, you guys had great offensive outing, three runs, four hits. What did you say to your team to kind of get them charged up for the game?
COACH VANDERHOOK: No comment. I don't want to tell you what I said.

Q. Rick, how do you assess the season as a whole?
COACH VANDERHOOK: We're in Omaha. You know, it's success. I told our guys at the end, us and Arkansas are done. But at the end, ultimately, there's only going to be one team happy. That's just the way it goes in these tournaments and at the end of the year in every sport, with the exception of football, even though they think they have a championship game. But everybody's going to go home. There's going to be only one champion at the end. You've seen us play a lot. Kendall quit calling me like a long time ago. I've teased him about it. But you know, we started off rocky. But then as it went along the road, you know, we've gone toe to toe with everybody. Louisville is as good as any of those teams we just played. But fortunately enough we pitched a little better and put a few more runs on the board. It's like the ball Steve hit yesterday, that ball is in the bullpen. Today's it's not. That's baseball. But when you're one of the final eight teams in the country in the middle of the U.S.A., they're going to be disappointed. But when it is all said and done they got to play in the College World Series, and that's a big deal.

Q. Coach, from your standpoint, what was Lange doing different after the first inning?
COACH VANDERHOOK: I don't know if it was much -- I don't know if it was as much what he was doing as it was what we were doing. If we would take a strike we would swing at the next pitch. And the change, I think it was the change that he went to late in the game. The bottom was dropping out of it. For me, we were chasing everything down, and the fastball's pretty straight for me. It's a hittable fastball. It's not Birdie or some of those guys that we've seen in this run. But we chased too much. I mean that was the bottom line. We swung at pitches that you can't hit and took pitches you could hit. We got chasing our tail and never got it stopped.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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