We've been fortunate so far that we've been able to get runs early. When you have the defense we do and Brittany on the mound, that's a lot of confidence for our kids.

She's throwing well. She's just playing with tremendous confidence. The team has made some great plays behind her. If we get her a couple of runs for a lead, as a coach, it's a great feeling.

I told them at halftime that the reason the game was close was that we weren't playing defense. We were playing defense with our arms instead of moving our feet.

Defense is, for some reason, always an asset here.

Blake really anchors our defense. On multiple occasions he's saved my butt. A big reason why teams have a hard time scoring on us is because they don't get a lot of points in the paint. That's Blake's doing.

I remember us making all sorts of mistakes on defense. I wanted to come out in the second half and do something to get the season off and running.