We're very pleased with our rookies. We graduated seven seniors last year, and we knew heading into the season that some of our freshmen needed to step up.

It's scary to say this, but I think we could be better (than last season). We graduated five seniors, but of those five only two were starters. A lot of people don't realize we had a young team, and we have a very, very good recruiting class coming in. It all looks good on paper. … I think we have a great chance at being there again at the end of the year.

I'm very pleased with my season this year. I think this season is even better than 2004,

Last year we went to overtime in a 1-1 tie. We have a lot of seniors [this season] and wanted to win it for them.

Being here last year and having six seniors returning and seven players that played last year made a difference. Our experience played a key role.

We graduated so many seniors that this is really a young team. We're going to take our lumps just because we're so young. We've got new pitching because we lost five pitchers. We lost all three catchers. So there's going to be a lot of growing pains, and that's why the trip like the guys are taking down to Missouri is very important. They're going to get a lot of games in and we can kind of sort things out a little bit to try to get ready for conference play down the road.