Post Game Quotes
December 21, 2002 | Women's Volleyball
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USC QUOTES
HEAD COACH MICK HALEY
(Opening statement)
"Obviously, we are tickled. That was one of the most enjoyable things that I have ever been a part of. The team played exceptionally well. I thought that we might have trouble after game two that was one of the finest exhibitions of kicking it up that I have seen Stanford do. In fact, it looked like they tried so hard at it that they couldn't sustain it. Logan [Tom] and Ogonna [Nnamani] went up and over one of the best blocks in this country. They were good and we didn't adjust as fast as we wanted to. They were really good in game two and I thought we put on a clinic in games three and four."
(Overall feelings about the match)
"I thought the first two games were really strange. When we play Stanford the games seem to be really different. No one else that we play, do we have statistics like we have when we play Stanford. In the first game, we gave them 17 points and still won. In the second game they had 21 kills in 30 attempts with only three errors. That is a good effort by Stanford. We talked at halftime about serving tougher. They raised the bar and we had to step up. We came out and hit .351 and .412, but the strange thing is Stanford gets 21 kills in game two. They had been getting about 15 kills on 35 swings and have been winning with that. We got 19 kills for about the same number of sets, so we are going to win if errors are reasonable. They averaged less than four errors per game for four games."
(On the play of Bibiana Candelas)
"She made a great difference. Stanford seems to program themselves to play against you. One of our things was to do that and then be flexible and change. We have had the ability all year to use [Lauren] Killian and [Alicia] Robinson and adding Candelas gives us three different kinds of players that we can throw at you. Using Candelas too early probably would have allowed everyone to prepare. We needed Bibiana to earn her way on to the team because this is a tight team. You can't just throw someone in there and tell them to win it for us. [Bibiana] worked really hard in practice everyday, finally she got a chance, she got another chance. Tonight we did everything we practiced."
*** RADIO QUOTES***
(On tonight's performance)
"This is just the start. There is more to come, let me tell you. These kids are wonderful. What a great, great match. We ended up with [Lauren] Killian serving and [Tracy] Lindquist in the front row at the end and both were seniors, how do you beat that."
(On leaving Killian in the game at the end)
"That was just a gamble. We had to go for it. We said that we weren't going to play safe, we were going to do whatever it took. Lindquist wanted extra hitting at the start of practice this morning. I knew she was ready. This is way too much fun."
(On the play of his team tonight)
"What a wonderful effort by this whole team. This is truly a team."
(On this year's team)
"This is the most special group of girls that I have coached. They are wonderful. They worked hard, they deserve this."
(On his seniors)
"The seniors are the ones who did this. They drove the boat the whole time. They are pretty special."
SOPHOMORE MIDDLE BLOCKER EMILY ADAMS
(On her feelings)
"I feel really good, but I don't think it has set in yet. I think it will be one of those things where I wake up tomorrow morning and think, 'What did we do yesterday?' I just feel great. It is not often you get a chance to achieve a goal that you have been working so hard towards for four and a half months. It has been a long December, but here we are."
(On picturing this from the beginning of the season)
"I think so, but I was never sure of it. One of my biggest things personally is that I don't want to get over confident and expect to be in a position like this, but we always planned for it, and we always took into consideration that we would be here. We wanted it so badly that we could taste it."
(On the game plan)
"We wanted to mix it up a little bit and do something that Stanford has never seen. I don't think we have ever, maybe once, rotated before we started a match, and we did do that today in the three games we won. It is good because they can not get that from any tape, so that was part of our game plan. The other thing was to play our game and execute; and if we execute, we didn't believe anyone could stop us."
(On defending Logan Tom)
"I think it was just playing our system. We didn't do anything specific for Logan or Ogonna [Namani], just the same system we have run the entire year."
(On beating the only team to defeat USC this year)
"It is. I wasn't trying to think about that in my mental preparation before the game; I wasn't going to think about the last two matches we played. I think those were anyone's games and we wanted to come in and make a statement that we should have won whatever we played in the past and that we deserve this. [Head coach Mick Haley] even said in the locker room before, 'if they're not playing up to their caliber, you tell them to play well, because we want everyone to see that we beat them at their best.' I think they played awesome, so I think that makes it a little bit sweeter."
(On the Pac-10)
"I think the Pac 10 is really hard. I am not trying to diss any other league; I just have not seen a lot of other leagues. I know that you can't ever relax when you're in the Pac 10."
(On the future with a young team)
"Actually, today when we were warming up, I saw the signs for 2003 Dallas and I was kind of like, 'We could be here next year, too!'"
(On the championship experience)
"It has been an awesome experience. I was a little worried at first because our schedule was so full of fun things I thought, 'Wait, we usually don't have this much fun on trips.' But it has been so much fun. Everybody's been here; our fans are here, our band. I couldn't pick a better place to be than New Orleans. It's so much fun."
JUNIOR MIDDLE BLOCKER KATIE OLSOVSKY
(On the excitement of winning the national championship)
"Tonight, I think everyone just played our hearts out. We knew this was our last shot, our last match to play together as a team. This is just an amazing feeling right now. Everyone contributed, and we played so well tonight. It's just really exciting."
(On the last point of the match)
"Honestly, on the last point, I just went out there and hit the ball as hard as I could. I don't know if there was a double block; I didn't see it. I just went up there and hit the ball as hard as I could. It went down, so I started celebrating."
JUNIOR OUTSIDE HITTER APRIL ROSS
(On the excitement of winning the national championship)
"Personally, I wasn't going to make predictions. But we're a team that in a match like this, we're just not going to lose. We're going to do it for each other. We played so well in the semifinal game (against Florida) because we knew we had to. We thought we were going to win in the first game; I don't think we tried to win. But we really stepped it up in the third and fourth games. We did it all for our teammates and because of our teammates."
(On Stanford's service game)
"They were serving pretty well, especially in game two. On a couple of their jump serves, I don't know if they were meaning to, but they were hitting weird angles. But once we got into rhythm and got a hold of what they were trying to do, we were more in sync with their serving."
JUNIOR OUTSIDE HITTER KEAO BURDINE
(On being named most valuable player)
"I didn't think I deserved it at all, but it was really exciting."
SENIOR SETTER TRACY LINDQUIST
(On concern after losing game two)
"We knew that we kind of let game two go. We knew we could play harder, and we knew we could win the match. The concern on our face was making sure that we pushed through the match and followed through with what we wanted to accomplish. We wanted to put all our effort, all our heart, and all our determination into what we wanted to do. The concern was making sure we stayed on track and finished up what we wanted to do."
(On team's offensive struggles in first game)
"In the first game, I think we were pushing too hard. It was a close game all the way through the first game. We were lucky to push that out. I think there was just a little bit of nerves, and maybe overplaying a little."
(On having so many hitters from which to choose)
"The major strength on our team is that every single player on the court is awesome. You can't just stop one player on our team. If you stop an outside, you've got a middle and a right to look at. But it just all goes to the hitters tonight."
STANFORD QUOTES
HEAD COACH JOHN DUNNING
(On his team's performance)
"It makes you realize that volleyball isn't quite what it seems to everyone. Eight kills (in game one)...that's pretty ridiculous. That could have won the game. We weren't doing well offensively. They were getting a lot of kills and we were making errors. You can't win a game with only eight kills."
(On his expressions while his team was making errors)
"The pressure must have gotten to me. Sports psychologists say you are not supposed to do that has a coach, by cringing and making that snarl. Our philosophy is if you want to be a really good team, you have to serve tough. We try to serve tough all the time (by having) different servers. When they are serving tough and you've make some mistakes, that's just luck. We try to deal with it. I think the cringes were coming from that we had some cases where we didn't even serve a tough serve and we made mistakes. Those are punishing. I'll try to control them for the next time."
(On bringing in setter Katie Goldhahn)
"We came into this year having lost a setter to graduation. Robin Lewis played exceptionally well, even with all of the injuries last year. Anna had played a lot last year and had a shot this year. We had a setter with a good, experienced feel for the game setter coming in this year in Katie Goldhahn. They battled for the starting position during the year. Katie played some full matches. Anna played more because she had some more experience. Katie really started to affect as a team and she sprained her ankle against Arizona State. She was out for a month and hadn't played in a match in over a month. So to do what she did today is really a sign as to how good she can be."
(On Logan's attitude on herself)
"Logan is very hard on herself, but the world is hard on her because of the expectations we place on her. She's been very successful on the world stage not just the college stage. Everywhere we go, everywhere we play, people expect her to play error free and get a kill every (attempt) because she's a great international player. That's not how volleyball is. She's so developed and so competitive. That's why she's successful in both levels."
SENIOR OUTSIDE HITTER LOGAN TOM
(On if Stanford was tense at the start of the match)
"Sometime we start like that, but we weren't really tense. But we can't always control it like we would like to."
(On what USC did to win)
"I think their serves stayed consistent and our passes got bad."
(On her performance)
"I was probably up and down at times. I would make plays, go on streaks and then I couldn't put the ball down."
JUNIOR MIDDLE BLOCKER SARA McGEE
(On the start of the match)
"We knew this was our last match regardless. We just wanted to come out and play hard."
(On the adjustments to USC's blocking)
"The inside wasn't working for me so I started to go around. (Logan Tom and Ogonna Nnamani) hit real well and the rest of us should have stepped up. But USC had a very balanced attack."
(On USC's attack)
"They knew where to go. They had four or five hitters and we weren't fast enough."
SOPHOMORE OUTSIDE HITTER OGONNA NNAMANI
(On giving it her all)
"You have no other option. You have to give it everything on every play. If I can't walk after it is over, I'll get a wheelchair."
(On USC's game)
"They were very steady and consistent. They didn't fluctuate at all, staying very consistent."
(On if they had any advantage after winning last year)
"We always think that we have an advantage from our past experiences. But this is a new year, a new season, and we have to work with what is going on now."
FRESHMAN SETTER KATIE GOLDHAHN
(On the game)
"We had a hard time with our defense and blocking and we couldn't put all of our game together. Our hearts were there. Everyone tried so hard, but it just wasn't there for us."
(On the difference between the two teams) "This is our third time playing against them (this year), so we know each other pretty well. They just came out stronger and more together."
(On coming off the bench)
"It is (tough), but the minute I got on, I got into the game. The team helped me out and told me everything about the other team. I was fine and got into the game pretty fast. I tried to help out as much as I could for the team."
(On the season)
"I've learned so much from (coach) John (Dunning) and from the other players. I think I grew just because of that. I hope in my next three years I can keep growing and getting better."
JUNIOR MIDDLE BLOCKER JENNIFER HARVEY
(On the game)
"I thought it was a well-fought match. USC is a great team and they've proved themselves throughout the year. It was a great team effort; however, we just couldn't pull through in the end."
(On the season)
"We had a good season overall. We had a tough schedule, played lots of tough teams and there was lots of traveling for us, so it was a good preparation for this match."
