Fran Riordan Quotations

One disastrous inning. We're like any other team in the world. When we play good defense, don't walk guys and don't hit guys, we're OK. The eighth was a perfect example of that. The defense let down and all hell broke loose.

That's part of the little things. Tonight we had the one big inning, then we just chipped away. It's sound baseball - moving runners over with less than two outs, scoring runs with sacrifice flies, not giving away at-bats. You aren't going to score every time you do that, but if you do it consistently, good things will happen.

Normally, I'd say a win in the first game is huge, and it is huge. But we still have to come back and win two more games. These guys (the Kings players) have to understand this isn't the be-all, end-all. And if they don't understand it, I'll make them understand.

You always want to score first in any game - especially Game 1 of a five-game series. We were able to take advantage of some of their miscues, and we did a lot of the little, fundamental, things right.