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Creighton Head Coach Ed Servais
On the game and the regional:
"I want to congratulate Nebraska on winning the regional. NU is strong all the way around-on the mound, on defense, and they are creative with their offense. Our kids played as hard as they could in this second game. We have nothing to be ashamed of in the way we played this season. While we don't leave here happy, the fact that we won 48 games, the second-most in school history, will make us feel better down the road."
On NU starting pitcher Zach Kroenke:
"Zach Kroenke threw well and did a good job of keeping the ball down. We had a tough time staying off pitches down in the zone."
On NU's offensive creativity:
"In situations in which you'd think they'd bunt, they hit and run or double-steal. They're able to hit and run not only with a runner on first, but also runners on first and second."
On Creighton's fatigue down the stretch in the title game:
"We definitely wore down as the game went along. We hung in there well for four or five innings. Ben (Mancuso) gave us a chance to win the game and we had some good swings on Kroenke early. But, especially after Kroenke got command of his slider, we weren't able to get good swings and we just wore down from there."
On the regional's impact on baseball in the state of Nebraska:
"When I came to Creighton as an assistant coach, Nebraska was still at Buck Beltzer (Field). To see college baseball evolve to where there are 8,500 people at a game says a lot about baseball fans in Nebraska. A lot of people in this state never thought they'd see the day when both teams were this good."
Creighton Pitcher Ben Mancuso
On today's starting performance:
"Today was a day to build confidence. I worked on trying to build my confidence and get command of three pitches."
Infielder Tony Roth
On Nebraska pitcher Zach Kroenke's performance:
"He (Kroenke) did a good job locating his fastball, curveball and slider and did a good job backing that up with his change-up. Any time a pitcher has command of three pitches, he's probably going to be successful. Early on, we got good swings on Zach Kroenke, but as the game went on, we wore down."
On Creighton's future:
"Our goals coming into the year were to win the MissouriValley championship and to play in postseason baseball, something this senior class had never done. It means a lot to me and the other seven seniors that we were able to do that. While we wish we were playing tomorrow, we had a good year and this program is going in the right direction."
Nebraska Head Coach Mike Anderson
Opening Statement
"It was a good win for us obviously. We had put ourselves in a position to win a regional at home all season and I'm proud of our kids. I'm proud of them for a couple of reasons actually. One is that there was a lot of pressure being the No. 1 seed coming into the tournament and then we added Creighton into that mix and it just built. They went in and were aggressive and performed and hopefully that bodes well for this team."
"All the credit in the world to Creighton though. Credit to Ed Servais and his entire team. They are without a doubt the hardest competition we faced all season. I don't know about the past between these programs, but I do know there's no bad blood between these teams, just hard-nosed baseball and that's what we saw today."
On first baseman Curtis Ledbetter's performance:
"He was great. He took some big swings at times, but then he got rezoned in to what he was trying to do and found out those 0-1 or 1-1 pitches are a little better. Sometimes he tended to let those fly, but that's good to be aggressive and once he got it toned down he got some good hits."
On finishing the Regional undefeated:
"A lot of confidence is built. The biggest thing is that we don't have to play tomorrow. These guys went out onto the field today with a purpose and they got the job done the first time around."
On the possibility of playing Miami in the Super Regional:
"I'll say this, it's going to be a Husker Super Regional. It doesn’t matter who we play because the fans are going to show up and it's going to be great Nebraska baseball. This is what Hawks Field was built for, the chance to play Regionals and Super Regionals and now we're getting the opportunity to do both. We'll be prepared to play no matter who is on the field against us."
Pitcher Zach Kroenke
On his performance:
"I just started off a little shaky and then the slider started to work a little better than it did earlier in the game. I'd definitely say the slider was my bread and butter today."
On Creighton chasing low pitches:
"At the beginning of the game, I was leaving it up a lot so I think after a bit they saw the slider and decided they might as well take a swing at it. Then I started getting it down and they were hitting the fastball all day long, so I put the slider on them and they just chased it into the dirt."
On his energy in the 9th inning:
"Well I was pretty pumped up for the ninth inning. I mean it's the championship game of the regional at home, so there was a lot of adrenaline running through my body. And striking out those three guys to finish out the game was really the icing on the cake."
First baseman Curtis Ledbetter
On the excitement of playing a Super Regional at home:
"That's big for us, getting an opportunity to play at home and maybe head to Omaha. But we have a tough week ahead of us. We've got to put in some good practice and work out hard here at the diamond. It's going to be a fun week though. We're anxious to get going again. We wish we could play again tomorrow because this was such a fun weekend for us."
Third baseman Alex Gordon
On the fan support:
"It's always great to get such good fan support. I mean, it's easy to play in front of a home crowd of over 8,000 like we did these last couple of days."
Shortstop Joe Simokaitis
On whether or not hitting the ball took pressure off the pitching staff:
"Yeah, sure. They've been picking us up all year long. They're a great staff and a deep staff. We had the bats rolling coming out of the Big 12 Tournament and carried that into this weekend and I think we set ourselves up nicely for the Super Regional."
On playing in another Super Regional:
"It's nice. I've never had to play a Super Regional on the road and I've had some great experiences here in Lincoln. It's just unbelievable, just after this weekend and I know it's only going to get better. So we're excited and ready to play. I think this team is ready to go."