COLLEGE WORLD SERIES: BATON ROUGE REGIONAL

May 30, 2025

Chris Curry

Jackson Wells

Ty Rhoades

Little Rock Trojans

Postgame Press Conference

LSU - 7, Little Rock - 0

CHRIS CURRY: First of all, I'm proud to be a Little Rock Trojan. Proud of my team tonight. I thought they stepped on one of the biggest stages in college baseball. I thought they competed. I thought they were not afraid of the moment. The moment wasn't too big for them.

A lot of credit to LSU, great job, especially on the mound. And we had a couple of mistakes on some pitches and they made us pay for it, like good teams do. But I'm very proud of these guys for getting us to this game. It's a big step for our program that we talk about. It was a team goal after winning the regular season championship last year.

And very thankful for Jackson Wells and for all he's done for the program. Very thankful for Ty Rhoades, who next year will go down as all-time leading hitter in just about everything.

He had a great night tonight at the plate. Made a diving stop. Credit to the Eyanson had command of four pitches. Fastball early was really working. Breaking ball -- curveball was good and found slider late and did a good job of adjusting our lineup the second and third time through.

But again I'm proud to represent Little Rock. I'm proud to represent the Little Rock Trojans, and I thought we competed tonight.

Q. What made Anthony Eyanson so dominant? You touched on it a little bit. What was giving you guys trouble, I guess, from him?

CHRIS CURRY: I'll go first. Ty can jump in. He saw him. I thought the fastball command was there earlier. We discussed trying to see the fastball down a little bit because we thought there would be some ride-and-carry, but actually he was commanding the bottom of the zone.

Early on, there were some change-ups and sliders that got to his arm side away but the breaking ball was there all night, the curveball, which is the pitch he's known for, it's a Major League pitch.

And later on, second, third time through, the slider started landing. I don't think too many change-ups. I think it was pretty much the two breaking balls and the fastball. Ty had a better look at it than I did.

TY RHOADES: It was just commanding his fastball and flipping that breaker right after. So when you get him to the plate, you go bang, bang 0-2, you're going. It's just a challenge to battle back from that.

Q. Jackson, what was working for you on the mound today and what was your game plan to battle against this LSU lineup?

JACKSON WELLS: Knew going into it, it would be difficult. They're all good hitters, SEC hitters, ranked sixth overall. Knew it was going to be a challenge. Kind of didn't have fastball command at first. Had to pitch off the breaking balls a little bit. Got into some trouble with some walks and hits early and then battled back.

Really the cutter was pretty good today. Just missing barrels with it whenever I got in a jam and kind of stuck with it.

CHRIS CURRY: I thought Jackson did a great job. We talked about, before the game, weathering the storm. We knew they were going to make some runs at us and get big innings set up with the crowd and the game.

If you look at the box score, Jackson never gave up more than one run in a single inning and did more than enough to give us a shot to win the game. We came up with a couple -- we came up in the fifth, I believe it was, with a couple runners on, maybe the sixth, and had an opportunity, but I thought Jackson did more than enough to give us a chance to win the ball game in his outing.

Q. Both the players, your coach just mentioned stepping onto one of the biggest stages in college baseball. I imagine you're all excited about that. Then you had to sit around. What do you do, do you try to stay locked in, do you stay relaxed what did you literally do for four hours?

JACKSON WELLS: For me, if I'm locked in for too long, you start overthinking it. Really it was just chilling with the guys, watching games that were going on today and then just chilling, waiting to see what's going on and just be ready to lock it back in.

TY RHOADES: I was just watching YouTube on my phone the whole time. Really didn't do too much.

CHRIS CURRY: These guys were very relaxed. They have been all the way through the tournament and that's been their M.O., but as soon as they said "play ball," they flipped the switch and were ready to compete. That's why I trust them and they stayed loose and enjoyed being here, enjoyed having a chance to compete in a postseason championship.

And I thought they did a great job of managing their emotions, managing their adrenaline. It can kind of take the air out of things when you have to sit around that long, but they did a great job of conserving their energy and their adrenaline until it's time to play.

Q. Jackson, in that third inning, when they really started to drive up your pitch count, what was your mentality, and what did you do to keep calm to hit 103 pitches tonight?

JACKSON WELLS: Yeah, it was just try to get ahead in counts. I would throw a strike, would get down 2-1 quite a bit, and so sometimes I wouldn't throw first-pitch strikes. For me it was trying to get ahead, stay ahead, and then just making pitches and see what happens.

Q. Jackson, in those situations where LSU had base runners, what did you do to limit the damage and get out of those innings unscathed?

JACKSON WELLS: Whenever they had base runners on, the number one goal is to keep the ball on the ground, give your defense a chance to work. So attacking the bottom of the zone and then trying to keep them off balance with off-speed, change-up, cutter, that sort of thing, and then flipping in a breaker when needed.

CHRIS CURRY: I'd like to compliment our reliever, Josh Beezley, the job that he did in throwing the last two innings. The big moment there, with Curiel, we decided to intentionally walk him to get to Jones. Pick your poison there.

I think Curiel is a Big Leaguer, and the side-arm match-up, righty versus lefty, just purely played the percentages. Obviously, Jones is an outstanding hitter, but we just tried to go right on right, and so Beezley did a wonderful job of throwing those two innings because we are in a tournament. We're going to play tournament. So we were able to save some guys that will give us an opportunity to compete tomorrow in whoever we play.

Q. I know Jackson threw a buck 30 in the conference tournament. 103 tonight. What went into the decision to pull him after the first five innings?

CHRIS CURRY: What you said, he was pretty taxed coming off the opener, had a little more time off. I believe it's a Wednesday start. So there was more than seven days there, but then when we were in a position where we were down by three and he had to work through some innings and he's got an opportunity probably to be a professional, and we always have their best interest at heart and wanted to get another look as well because we were coming up third time through the order, I believe, so just wanted to change up the look a little bit.

Q. If you'll allow me another weather-related question, I wanted to ask if you could walk us through the process of working with the NCAA to decide exactly what to do and how to wait out the weather scenarios to try to figure out what the best option is.

CHRIS CURRY: I think Nicole, who is our site rep, did a great job of communicating to Jay and I about what the weather issues were. They were adamant for both teams that they did not want to start the game and burn the arms, neither ours or LSU, and we appreciate that.

It's really easy to Monday-morning quarterback the person who is calling the shots on the weather. Trust me, we go through it at home. You just have to gather all the information. Nobody controls the weather. You just do the best you can and stay locked in.

But I thought the communication, I think we met three times back in an office to give us enough time to warm up and be ready and make sure that they didn't start too early.