Colorado University Athletics
Colorado State-Washington Quotes
November 30, 2006 | Volleyball
Washington Jim McLaughlin
General
“It was a good, good volleyball match, I thought almost start to finish. I think CSU is a good team. In fact, having playing them a number of times in this tournament, and I thought it was the best team that we played. They played their best match, but I also thought that we played well. We played better and better as the match went on.”
“It wasn't like we played poorly, but we made some little errors at little times, we didn't take advantage of some opportunities. I had counted at one point we had 11 opportunities and converted one, and I'm kinda going ?hang on guys.' We had to work on our defense to offense transition, which they were pretty good at and then we did a nice job getting on their tendencies and staying on our tactical plan in transition because they were doing the same thing in transition. Eventually, these guys figured it out and they were composed.”
On Momentum- “We try to be ?steady eddy' the whole time and kind of build momentum as we're going. We did that with the exception of a stretch of points in game three. It was just a series of errors that we made where we hit out of bounds. You know that kind of concerns you as a coach, but once we started challenging the block I liked the rhythm and we were putting pressure on them all night defensively we just couldn't convert. We were creating like crazy. I told the team this thing is going to be determined by who creates and converts at the highest percentage; who can create opportunities and then convert them. We got better every game.”
On This Years Team Compared to Last Year- “It's a whole different team. We have systems that are familiar and we've got a nice core with [Courtney Thompson] and [Christal Morrison] and [Alesha Deesing], but we have five new kids on the floor so it changes. We're not as mature, but we're mature. These guys, you know that other team understood their capabilities. This team, although we were before the match 25-4, they're still figuring, ?how good are we?' This isn't magic. Whether we were up or down, we just played flat-line.
On CSU- “They've got a good coach who can coach the game. They're running a faster set to the pins. They're much faster than last year but they still have a quick attack presence. Last year they were quick dominated, their outsides weren't as good, but to be honest with you the match I was most nervous about was more than Nebraska, more than Tennesee, was Colorado State at home. It's not fun coming here, I hope we don't come here every year, but it looks like it could happen. You know they're just a good team, they've got a good opposite, they spread it out, and they're fast to the pins. They play much better defense than last year.”
Washington
Courtney Thompson
On the Overturned Call- “I just asked [the official] if she saw [the call] and she said no. She said ask [the sideline judge] so I ran over to him and I said ?did you see it' and he said ?no, I was just saying what she saw. I was just going with her.' It didn't hit her hand so they got together. I thought it would be a replay but apparently they gave us the point.”
On Game Momentum- “It's really important , especially when you're battling back and forth, and we had to come form behind in game one. So to have that kind of momentum to push them a little bit is integral.”
“It's a momentum game and you just have to take advantage when those things happen and they go both ways during the match, but we'll take it anyways.”
On Playing CSU Again This Year-“I don't remember a whole lot from last year. Every game was tough last year. I knew they were a tough team.”
“Earlier today the team got together. We're confident in our abilities over time so we think that if we stay on what we do then we're going to win the match and however long it takes. The other team may be better than us in one game or for half and hour but over two hours we're going to come out with a win.”
General- “I think throughout the match, the first game they came out and were on fire. We just stayed on what we do, we just came out with it. I think it was good because we ended the first game on a little bit of a run so we carried the momentum into the second game. It just kind of got us going at the end.”
On Her Personal Play- “I don't think I did anything special, it was just doing things we practice everyday and just carry over to the match. We had a good practice this week and I think that what it just allowed me to do.”
On feeding the ball to the “hot hand”- “There's so many weapons on our team I don't think anyone can ever get like that.”
Christal Morrison
General- “I felt like defensively they were really good and they did a good job at swinging in transition and taking tough swings too on their side. They stayed to what our report said and we weren't too worried about that. We were more worried about what we needed to do. We did a good job on staying on what we knew they were going to do or what we thought they were going to do.”
Colorado State
General- “I think that the first thing that needs to be said is that our team is a completely different team from a month ago and certainly two months ago. I think we showed tonight that we certainly deserve to go on in the NCAA Tournament. We've got a good group of kids and a nice base for the future. Katherine Whitney, who is from
On positives to take from loss- “Not just this match, but the way that we ended this year, if we can use that as a starting point to begin this off-season, we're going to have some talented young kids. But what we really need to take from this is that we can play
On season- “We've got a lot of people coming back to the program. For me, this really has been the most fun year I've ever had coaching a team because we have improved so much. We came into this year knowing that it would be a great challenge because our personnel was so different than in the past, but I learned so much and they responded so well, that you have to question the difference between this year's Washington match and last year's Washington match. Last year we were way more physical against Washington, but we played way better this year, and I think that's because kids responded and we have kids that are great volleyball players.”
On the play of
Colorado State
Katherine Whitney
On Composure- “One of the things that we talked about was staying composed and trying to be that way for the duration of the game. I thought we did that in the first game very, very well, and that's what we were saying going into the second game.”
On the play of
Jaime Strauss
On the Defense- “I thought our defense was very good tonight. Considering that we're playing a top-10 team, I thought that our defense stuck with them a lot of the time. At times I thought that our defense was a little bit better than theirs.”
On Composure- “I thought that we did panic a little bit. I think it showed because they ran points on us, not only because they're good and they put pressure on us, but also because we were giving them points by making errors. I think that we did panic in some situations, but not most.”
Mekana Barnes
On Second Meeting with
On Positives- “We know what our weaknesses are and we know what to work on in the spring. We know what we're good at and we're going to keep getting better.”
