Matt Purke improved to 16-0 on the season as TCU dominated UCLA in a 6-2 victory. Purke wasn’t overly dominant with only two strikeouts over 6.1 IP, but forced eight of the first nine Bruin hitters to ground out, not allowing a hit until the fifth inning as Chris Giovanazzo reached on an bunt.
Rob Rasmussen (11-3), who statistically was UCLA’s best pitcher this season as the Sunday starter, picked up the loss as he gave up three ER in 4.1 IP. He gave up six hits and three walks on the outing, raising his WHIP to 1.1 but it wasn’t necessarily a bad outing. Rasmussen struck out six Horned Frogs, but couldn’t get any help from his offense as the Bruins only registered 4 hits in the contest, none of which were for extra bases. Garrett Claypool was strong in his first inning of work, but then gave up Home Runs to Featherston and Holaday to seal the victory for TCU.
Taylor Featherston was great today for the Horned Frogs, and I’m coining him the Mayor of Omaha for 2010. He was amazing with the glove, and led at the plate going 2-2 with a HR, 3 RBI, 3 BB, and a run scored. Featherston is second to South Carolina’s Jackie Bradley, Jr., with 8 RBI in the College World Series.
Quotes:
UCLA Coach John Savage:
Just seemed like we were swimming upstream all day defensively. A little bit on the mound, certainly offensively. But that, you know, that can’t happen, we know, at this stage. And we live another day and we need to kind of make sure that this one there’s no residue tomorrow, and we’ll go with Bauer tomorrow.
And it’s a new ball game tomorrow, and we feel very, very confident about our team. And we had a misstep, and I think you gotta give a lot of credit to TCU. And we’ll get back after it and play Bruin baseball tomorrow.
Taylor Featherston
Every single one of my bats went strikes this whole tournament. I’m kind of getting comfortable with it a little bit. But up and down the order, solo home runs aren’t going to win us games. We understand that. We’re trying with two strikes to get the next guy up. Like that long inning we had the other night. If it’s not you, it’s the next guy. The next Just trying to put good swings on balls, focusing on the opposite field, and the home runs
will show up.
