Arizona-CU Quotes
November 14, 2015 | Volleyball
Coach Kritza
ON COMING OUT STRONG AGAINST ARIZONA – “I think we match up pretty well, but this particular match complete credit to these kids. They understood the significance, they understood what we needed to do as a team and they came out to play; I could even tell in the warm-up. They were lively; maybe it's their new warm-up shirts who knows. Whatever it is they came to play today and I am really proud of the team effort. It wasn't just the win but the fashion in which we won was a solid victory. They executed and did what we talked about. When we had to make adjustments they did it quickly and it's great because we are going into the tail end of our regular season and we need that for post season play. So their heads are in the right place and we needed this convincing win and this level of play more than anything from this group, so I am proud of them.”
ON THE MOST WINS OVER RANKED OPPONENTS – “The way they [Alexis, Anna, and Gabby] are responding to this is something that makes me very happy because they are focused on the right things. They expect to win and there is a culture that we have created here that when you show up, it doesn't matter who you're playing, you expect to win and then you work your tail off until you do. Even if we fall short sometimes the idea is that we show up and we are wanting to walk away with the W.”
ON MOVING FORWARD TO STANFORD – “We need to keep working; we need to get back in the gym. Even after convincing wins, there are things we can improve, albeit small things and fine tune a couple things and rotations. We have to prepare properly. One thing about playing in the Pac-12, you have two tough teams every week. It doesn't matter where they stand in the conference; there are two legitimate matches every week. For us, we need to make sure that we're battle-tested on the road and we have serious business to tend. We have to make sure that we recover and enjoy this weekend; they enjoyed it. We need to enjoy that piece, but immediately turn the page and start preparing. Everybody is fighting right now, particularly teams that have numbers in front of their names.”
ON IMPORTANCE OF WINNING FO R TOURNAMENT RESUME
“I've been on both sides as a head coach of having 28 wins and not making the tournament and having to understand RPI. A lot of times it doesn't necessarily match up with the effort and the level of play these young women put in. I think we really bolstered our tournament résumé. For us, you could tell from their comments, that's not what they think about. That's my job to think about those things. They show up to the gym every day, train as hard as they can, and take it one match at a time. If we do that, we'll like where we are. I'm really proud of how this team did this weekend, because we did bolster our résumé quite a bit.”
Players
ON THE MOST WINS OVER RANKED OPPONENTS – “Yeah we are just out here to fight and play. They covered it all.”
ON HAVING A STRONG SECOND SET – “We didn't want to go to five or four (sets). We wanted to get it done in three.”
ON THE MOST WINS OVER RANKED OPPONENTS – “Along with what Alexis said, I don't even think most of us think about the fact that our opponent is ranked. We just go out there and play. It's just another team in different jerseys and we just have to play our game and know what to expect from them. I think every time we do that we end up coming out strong and beating those ranked teams makes it even better.”
ON HAVING A STRONG SECOND SET – “I think after we got down right at the beginning of the second set, we just took control, got it back, and had some good runs. From there it was ours; we took control in the middle of the set and we didn't let it go.”
ON SUCCESS BLOCKING AT THE NET – “Getting those big blocks right at the beginning of the first set was huge, because once you shut down some of those big hitters they start trying to do different things, either just swinging harder and that may come with more errors or tipping more. I thought tonight we did a lot better job picking up those tips than we did at Arizona, because we were expecting it from them. The play at the net was really good tonight. We were covering up, taking good, aggressive swings, finding the seams and our blocking had improved a lot, especially from the other night. Our pin-blockers did a really good job of setting up a block and that makes it all the more easy for a middle blocker.”
ON THE MOST WINS OVER RANKED OPPONENTS – “Honestly it's a great feeling because it shows just how much more we need to improve and that we are going along with the records and breaking some as well. Every day we come in, we don't even think about that kind of stuff, so every time we hear that stuff (breaking records) it is news to us and a great accomplishment.”
ON HOW BIG THESE TWO WINS WERE – “This weekend was huge, especially coming off the three losses, but then again it's the Pac-12 anyone can win any given night: match-ups are better, some girls are on, and some girls are off. It was really great that we could come in and start off strong. We really knew the importance of this week and were able to get the two wins.”
ON HAVING A STRONG SECOND SET – “We know those are our toughest sets, two and sometimes three. Two every time is just getting your head in the game.”
