Illinois State Head Coach opening statement:
"The first thing I would like to say is how proud I am of JD Learnard. Not many people know he was pitching with a heavy heart tonight. He found out yesterday, his grandmother passed away. JD is leaving the team tonight to be with his family. What he did today shows what kind of heart he has and how much the game means to him. The game is not bigger than family, which is why he is leaving tonight. Hopefully, he will be back Saturday, if we get that far. I am so proud of him and the effort he gave. I think our team all rallied around him. It was a tremendous effort. It wasn't our smartest played game that we had all year; we mad a couple of errors. We made too many errors on bases. At the end of the day it was just a game of playing with your heart, playing with passion. I thought we did that unbelievably."

Illinois State Sophomore infielder Kevin Tokarski on hitting against Indiana State:
"I don't know, I just go out there and play baseball. It doesn't really matter who the team is or who we are playing. When we are in the post season, we are just prepared to get the hits and win."

Illinois State Sophomore pitcher Kenny Long on his pitching performance:
"I like to make it interesting, I guess. I have been put in this situation before. I feel comfortable with coming in for multiple innings, with a close lead. I worked out of a jam when I came in and we got some runs-it worked out for us."

Indiana State Head Coach Rick Heller opening statement:
"It just wasn't our day. Joe wasn't as sharp as his has been. We had a rough 4th inning. We gave up a big inning. I think we did a decent job of scrapping back. We had a chance to tie it up with a runner at third and less than two outs. Still, felt comfortable that we had a chance to come back and felt good about the situation. I thought we were getting better at bats off Kenny Long, than we did the first time we saw him at home. We just needed to keep it close. Unfortunately, Joe was running out of gas and our bullpen didn't do a very good job. We really couldn't use Scott Harlan because of what he did to his arm against Creighton, yesterday; which was disappointing. We have had him in that role. All season long he has been awesome. It was a day we could not do a lot of things we wanted to do. Jeremy Lucas got the flu last night, throwing up all night and all day. Our starting catcher was banged and one of our top hitters. Robby Ort is beat up pretty bad with his wrists. It just seemed like our day kind of ran together for us."

Indiana State Senior outfielder Ryan Strausborger on hitting against Illinois State:
"You can't really pick up a window. You usually look up at a little window for every pitcher, wherever his arm delivery is. That is the spot you pick up to try to see the ball over the plate. He has about five different arm angles. Honestly, you have to almost sit off speed with him because he throws the slider so much. You have to let him hang the slider, and you have to sit back as long as you can. You almost have to let the fastball go by because he throws the slider so much."