Diane Ninemire Against Quotations

Lauren really showed us glimpses of the pitcher that she can be. If we can expect this kind of performance from now on, it would be huge to know that we have two pitchers capable of throwing against any team in the country.

(Lauren) gave up a lot of runs in the last few innings. But she hung in there at the end when she needed to. Her back was against the wall, but she came up with the strikeouts and got us out of it.

This was a great opportunity for our kids to get a new kind of exposure. Some of our kids won't get to play in the Olympics, so it was a really unique chance for us to see how we match up against a top national team.

We didn't shut the door against Sac State when we should have. But Kristina threw very well, and that was big for us.

Kelly just had more success against Arizona. I was trying to match up the best pitcher against the type of team that we were facing that day, so I decided to start Kelly.

If she can be consistent and eventually get to the point where she can go seven innings if need be, it would be tremendous to have two pitchers capable of throwing against any team in the country. There aren't many teams better than the one she faced (last weekend).

That was nice to see how we matched up against a top national team that trains from seven in the morning to 11 at night, six days a week. For us to play the way we did is a good sign of how things are going.

We're going to have to get our bats alive like we did against UNLV. We've got to have the same kind of attitude we did in that game and jump on (Sacramento State) early.

We'll still be trying to get a feel for things this weekend. We worked on a lot of our communication problems in practice. I think we're getting closer to a starting lineup, but this time we're going to see better competition-we're going to see if we can do the same things we did right last weekend against better teams.

We looked at too many strikes and just didn't have the pitch selection (on Wednesday). Against Sacramento, we've got to swing at our own strikes and not the pitcher's strikes. We've got to be willing to swing the bats. If we do, we'll be fine.