Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn, Blaine Knight and Carson Shaddy will represent the Razorbacks at the College World Series finals press conference. Oregon State is represented by coach Pat Casey, Nick Madrigal and Adley Rutschman. Updates to follow:
Van Horn: Proud of the players all year for being resilient and pulling for each other. This year has been really fun to be a part of and the CWS has been incredible. Van Horn congratulated Casey and his players for making it back to Omaha. He says the Beavers have essentially duplicated what they did last season. He figured they would be back in Omaha.
Casey: It's an honor to be here. He also congratulated Van Horn and Arkansas players for being here. Anytime you knock off the defending champion it says a lot about your club, he said of Arkansas. He's proud of the way his guys have handled things this season. He called the CWS the "greatest sporting event in the world."
Rutschman: Was in first grade the last time Oregon State was here. Watching the Beavers growing up, he said this was the only school he wanted to come to. He feels fortunate to just be with the team here. It's something special and he's excited to be a part of it.
Knight: Oregon State can swing it really well and they're solid top to bottom. He's going to get his pitching plan together this afternoon with Wes Johnson.
Rutschman on facing Arkansas: To get to this point, it's not easy. It's a testament to their team. They hit and pitch well. Everyone is excited to start a great series and play for a title.
Madrigal on facing Arkansas and what he knows of the Razorbacks: We caught briefly some Arkansas games lately. Plans are to go more in-depth on Arkansas today. We're excited to get it going.
Madrigal: We haven't thought too much about elimination games. We take every game the same way each time out. Coaches do a great job of telling us to stay in the moment.
Rutschman: When you lose the first game and see what's ahead, it's important to take things one pitch at a time. We have a lot of great guys who have been here before and we really had to come together. I'm proud of what we've accomplished so far.
Knight: Early on in the fall you could tell this team was going to be special. This team showed what it was about when we lost to Mississippi State on the road. It showed how mentally tough we are.
Shaddy: We've got a lot of older guys and a lot of expectations. But the older guys have done a good job telling the younger guys that expectations are just someone's opinion. We're really happy to be here and looking forward to the matchup.
Madrigal: We knew we had a lot of freshmen coming in that could help a lot. We've known from Day 1 that they could help us out. We have a lot of great guys on the team.
Rutschman: We had a lot of the same guys coming in from last year but with new guys you never know how that's going to mesh. Older guys accepted the new guys and everyone has done a great job stepping up. We're really closely bonded.
Shaddy on Casey Martin's speed: You know a guy is fast when all of the guys on the football team are talking about him all over Twitter. Martin is incredible and the fastest guy he's ever played with.
Van Horn on managing Arkansas' downtime: After the way our regular season ended, it's almost nice to have some downtime. We're not following the guys around. We've got some guys that like to go fishing, and they're going to go today. It's been nice at this point in the year to give them some time off. When I told them we weren't practicing yesterday they were excited.
Van Horn: Blaine Kinsley is doing a phenomenal job here with us. He's earned the players' respect, but he's also getting after them. We're maintaining our strength. We've worked out 3-4 times for an hour to hour and 15 minutes at Creighton. It's been a great thing having Kinsley around this year.
Casey: We don't do a lot of advanced scouting with teams in other leagues. You can just kind of go, 'Hey that guy looks pretty good,' from your TV. Everyone knows we've played five games. We're not in sequence with our pitching, but we'll figure it out.
Van Horn: We knew everything we needed to know about Mississippi State when we found out it would be them or Oregon State playing us in the finals. You can look over stats, if a team strikes out a lot, when they like to bunt, etc. Sometimes you can watch on TV and pick up a little more. ... There is no top 5 in a lineup better than theirs.
Casey: We haven't gotten one quality start out of our best guys in four starts, and that's puzzling to me. I'm not sure how we got to the point where we continue to play. Our freshman gave us our best start. I think it comes down to which of those guys feels like could give us five innings. You can't concern yourself with anything other than what your best option is.
Van Horn on Oregon State's success: It's amazing to me because I know how hard it is to win. How are they doing it? It's not like they're in Houston and can just go grab players. They're grabbing guys from everywhere. It's been incredible to watch from the outside.
Casey on his program's recent success: I think we fell into a good group of kids. You've got to have the good fortune on your side. That's a pretty good group of guys who know how to play the game and all that stuff.
Van Horn: When we got here in 2004, Arkansas hadn't been in 15 years, so it was big for our program. It kickstarted our program and probably helped us get some recruits. We were picked to finish 11th in the league that year and won a conference title. "I thank God every day for that year," he said smiling. We were good in 2009 and had some big leaguers on that team. In 2012 we couldn't hit but we could pitch. In 2015, we managed to get here, but this year we felt it was different. You appreciate getting here. It really, really jumpstarted us.
Casey on Arkansas in general: They're pretty darn good. I don't know if I've seen a more complete team than them that can hit, play defense, run and pitch. They're a disciplined team and there's not a weakness with them.