Quotables: UCLA Baseball coach John Savage

On the No. 1 rankings:
“It means you’re playing well; whenever you’re ranked in the top 25 in April, it means you’ve done something. We got off to a very good start and had two hard-fought series the last two weekends and fortunately we came out on top of both. We’re heading in the right direction.”

On how the 22-game winning streak to start the season affected the Bruins:
“The streak started to affect the players and how we played, how we even approached every game. It seemed like the last couple weeks, we had not played how we’d been playing. The 22 games…we needed to get back to basics and fundamentals. Being aggressive, playing a pitch at a time.”


On the ends becoming more important than the means:
“The result was a little ahead of the process. We needed to back off that. The Stanford loss came at a good time, and we ended up having our game of the year, bouncing back to win the third game of the series. The streak was great, players responded, but at the same time, baseball is a game of ups and downs.”

On baseball not being a sport of perfection:
“It’s a humbling game. There are a lot of negatives throughout a game that players have to deal with. Strikeouts, errors, poor pitches – it’s how you respond from those things. That’s the difference in a player and a team.”