Aggies, College Station Regional participants meet media

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Texas A&M Aggies

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Rob Childress

• Excited to be in the postseason nine years in a row. Tribute to the players that we have. A great season and proud of our seniors. Great leadership.

• Blake Allemand and Mitchell Nau were both football players in high school and play with that mentality for us. What they have done between the lines has been special. Nau went out this summer in Alaska and changed his body and mentality, came back and has been as big a part of our team as anybody. Both lead with a chip on the shoulder.

• Matt Kent will start in game one and Grayson Long will start in game two for us. When Kent got the ball against Vandy, he was special and that makes the decision to start him for game one that much easier.

• Very proud of the man that Grayson Long has become. He's grown up off the field and as a pitcher.

• Daughter graduates tomorrow at 4 pm from College Station High School at Reed Arena. I'll go to that and then come back over here for the game.

• Don't know who will pitch after the first two games. Just focused on winning games one and two.

Blake Allemand

• We thought we had a great year but didn't get a national seed. We just need to play with a chip on our shoulder and let the rest take care of itself.

• Goal was always to be the leader on the infield and be constant with my energy and effort.

* Special to play here as a senior in front of our fans.

Mitchell Nau

• Gives us an advantage to be here in front of the 12th Man and be here in a consistent routine. That will help us.

• I came back from Alaska this summer and my mindset was to be in the lineup every day. I love and have embraced my role as the DH and the three-hole hitter for this team.

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Coastal Carolina Chanticleers

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• Honored to be here — great hospitality here.

• Great season some ups and downs but kids have played hard.

• Happy to be here see how far we can go.

• Alex Cunningham could be back by tomorrow; Austin Kerr likely not. To get one back would be big.

• We hope to get Casey back, may be a game-time decision. He might be able to play at one point this weekend but not sure about tomorrow. One of the toughest kids on the team.

• We'll lean toward Cunningham (on Friday) if he can go.

• This park plays somewhat similar to our park. Never out of the game but never secure the game [until it's over]. Those factors play in to how you play.

• A&M is a great team but today, I'm not worried about A&M. I have a lot of work to do to get a chance to play those guys. I do know they're one of the best teams in the country.

• Making this run was huge for us. We were devastated with injuries a year ago so it was big for us to get into a brand new ball park back on campus. We played one of the toughest schedules in the country and had guys go down late with losing our one and two [pitchers]. Proud of these kids for persevering.

• Awesome to be here. Goal is to reestablish the tradition of Coastal Carolina baseball and that it's back on the map.

Michael Paez

• Any team we play, we're ready for — and we'll play our best no matter the conference.

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                                     Texas Southern

HC Michael Robertson

• We deserve to be here that's for sure. I feel like things that we've done during my tenure here at Texas Southern over a seven-year period of time, everything is a bi-product of what's happened with this ball club this year.

• I don't even know what to call Texas A&M other than that they’re the best team in the country. So this is our reward for winning the SWAC Championship, we get Texas A&M. I watch them almost every night on the SEC channel and salivate at what Texas A&M Coach Childress has done with his ball club.

• That's what we do at Texas Southern, I run three to four miles a day. So you know we came down here to run. We came down here to fight, we're not going to get away from it.

• I think that from his mindset of making a move to pitch Kent, he is thinking what I’m thinking. He is a good matchup against us.

Zach Welz

• Elimination games, you have to dig deep in those games and just do what you have prepared for all year long, so we went back to our game plan, and we executed our game plan.

• It should be a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to it. I’m here to enjoy the experience, and I’m also here to win. So I’m really excited for the whole regional and everything.

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                                     California

HC David Esquer

• We are excited to be here. This is as tough a regional as I’ve seen. We’ve never been here before. It’s our first trip to College Station. We follow Texas A&M and know how good they are.

• Really proud of our team. It’s been a little bit of a journey to get back to the playoffs. We’d like to have been here sooner, but it was a process our program had to go through.

• Daulton Jefferies has been our Friday starter, and he’ll continue to be our Friday starter. He’s a sophomore with a quality arm. He’s going to be highly regarded and touted by professional baseball coming out of his junior season.
  

• We know how good offensively Coastal has been. We’re going to go at them with our best. We have to keep the ball in the park to be effective.

Chris Paul

• This is my first experience in regionals, so coming in after the World Series makes for big shoes to fill. Like coach said, it took us a little bit of time to get back to it, but I’m happy to be here now. 

Devin Pearson

• We’re definitely not scared of anybody. We played Campbell who’s in Coastal’s league, so we know they have some arms and know we need to take care of business. Any given day, anything can happen.