I was real happy with our overall play, defense and hitting. We were hitting the ball, but it just didn't go our way. We were just hitting the ball right at them.

That's the big key. Anytime you have an off night, as long as your defense is there, you can still stay in the game or win the game. That's going to be our identity all year.

I'm told every day that defense starts with me. I like to take that personally. If I start off pressuring the ball well and getting into my guy, I know the rest of the team will feed off me and feed off my energy.

We just seemed to keep digging a bigger hole for ourselves today. Abilene High hit the ball well, and I'll give them credit for that. There's nothing you can say when they're hitting the ball well. But we had some opportunities we didn't really take hold of.

We came out and hit the ball great in the first inning. It wasn't like they were making errors, we were just hitting well.

It felt great. You'd have thought we won district.