Astros third-base coach Matt Galante's says Tuesday's loss hurts because they had it in their hands. When Houston takes a lead into the eighth they usually win it. He's confident Dave Mlicki will pitch strong Wednesday and the Astros will head to Atlanta 1-1. Here's his view of today's game from the coach's box.

This was tough loss for us because when we take a game with a lead into the eighth inning, that's our kind of game. We usually hold them in the eighth and ninth. We didn't hold them today. It hurts, because Game 1 is always a big game. It gives a team a one-game lead, which does so much for a team's confidence.

But we battled the whole game. Maddux pitch real well, and Wade pitched an outstanding game. He really did. But we got behind a couple of runs, and then Brad hit that home run and tied it up there. We took advantage of an error on their part to score our third run. And they took advantage of an error on our part.

The Braves played magnificent defense. Andruw Jones made an outstanding catch in right center field off Moises Alou, and Chipper made a great play at third off Bagwell that looked like a double. They played some really good defense. Ironically, one error from them gave us the lead and an error from us hurt us in the eighth inning.

It's a tough loss. I thought we swung the bat pretty well. We had two home runs. That was a big home run by Brad, it got us back in the game. Our record when we're ahead going into the eighth is 74-5. When we get into the eighth and ninth, we usually win it.

With Chipper versus Billy, the percentages were there. Chipper was 0-for-8 with six strikeouts versus Billy. It's just unfortunate. It just didn't happen for us. We've got to battle back tomorrow. We've got a tough game because Glavine's a good pitcher. Dave Mlicki is going to have a good game for us. He was great for us during our St. Louis series at home and the Giants series in San Francisco, so if we get a good game out of Dave, score some runs, we'll get back to 1-1. We need to do that, there's no question about it. This one hurts because it was in our hands. It's not like we had it in the fifth. We got into the eighth and we're a pretty good team in the late innings. It just didn't happen today. The thing is, we got down early, we battled back.

And the fans were great. Our fans were just great. I can't say enough about them. They stayed into the game, stayed to the end, were cheering. They were really into the game, and that's great. Hopefully, we'll have them back tomorrow.