NCAA First Round Volleyball Quotes
December 2, 2005 | Volleyball
Dec. 2, 2005
North Carolina head coach Joe Sagula
Opening statement: First of all, I want to congratulate the College of Charleston, who played a great match. We knew coming into this match they were going to be a very competitive team, a very feisty team and a great ball-control team, and that proved to be, I think, the big difference tonight in the match. Also, I'm proud of our team. I think they fought real hard towards the end. It was a real close game in that fourth game. We'll forget about the third game - as I've seen in volleyball throughout the year here, so many scores teams have lapses, and I think we had a little bit of one there. But that had a lot to do with the College of Charleston, who played outstanding volleyball tonight. They served well, and they just kept the ball in play and really challenged us.
I'm proud of the players who are with me right now (Taylor Rayfield and Dani Nyenhuis) because they represent this program with great distinction and great class. Their careers at UNC here have been outstanding, to be culminated with an ACC championship, and we're going to think about a lot of the great things we accomplished this year and that's a lot of it. We're disappointed right now, obviously, in the outcome of this match and we'll go back and look at things, but that shouldn't take away from the type of season we've had, the really competitive season we've had. Taylor Rayfield, I believe, looking at the stats here, probably set a career-high for digs - she was all over the place with 53 tonight, which was outstanding. Dani's had an outstanding season for us and carried us and helped get us to this match tonight. Both of them, obviously, were key players in this program.
On preparing for the match: We knew we had a tough battle ahead. It's interesting how we did a lot of things in our preparation for them, but they were a lot more efficient tonight. They played a good high-percentage game. It took us out. It took us awhile. But I thought we'd get them there towards the end, though, but we made it exciting for everyone.
Taylor on her school record being bittersweet: Yeah, I guess that's the best way to say it. There have been a lot of goals that we've been trying to reach all season. With this being my first time at the libero position, I've just been trying my hardest to set the tone for our defense. It's great, I'm glad that I got it, but it's hard. It was a tough loss. So it's hard for me to look at it that way, but I'm definitely glad I got it.
College of Charleston head coach Sherry Dunbar
Opening statement: Obviously we're very excited to make history tonight and win the first round of the NCAA tournament for the first time in Southern Conference history. It's just a really exciting feeling for all of us.
On her team's approach to the match: First of all, North Carolina played very well tonight. They served very tough, and we struggled with our passing. Defensively we're ranked No. 1 in the nation right now, and that's something we really pride ourselves on, so we just knew if we could really stay in our defensive mode we would start passing the ball better throughout the match. At the very beginning our passing struggled, and we've been struggling with our passing lately, but our defense really kept us in the match, and we just figured we'd stay on that track.
On her team's mindset for the tournament: This NCAA tournament is a lot different than last year. We were very excited to be in last year, flying to the West Coast to play USC, the defending national champions. This year it was more - we have a great senior class that leads this team - and it was a different type of excitement. They wanted to win in the NCAA tournament. They were not nervous going in to this match. I mean, you step onto the court, any athlete is going to feel that nervousness. But I think they were more confident. They had a job to do, and they wanted to do it. They knew they were capable of doing it. So the nervousness kind of subsided.
Amanda Timmers on the nerves at the beginning: I think we had a little bit of jitters at the beginning. I think we were a little overwhelmed with the huge arena and all of the fans, but I think once we settled down, we started playing our game and things just went from there.
On the dramatic rally on match point: Physically, it was the most draining experience of my entire life. Emotionally, it was a rollercoaster because we didn't know if the ball would end up on our side, on their side. I think we just stayed really aggressive and I think that's what enabled us to win that last rally was staying really really aggressive.
Virginia Commonwealth University head coach James Finley
Opening statement: We were really fortunate to have had the season that we did. We had some great leadership and great play from our kids. We're a little disappointed in the outcome, obviously, because we felt like we've played better than what we did tonight. But we're really proud of the effort the team made, and they fought hard at the end and tried to work hard to come back and to get a game where we could continue the match. So I'm really proud of my team's effort and the heart with which they played.
On his seniors: These two young ladies have done a tremendous job. I came in this spring and changed their whole world - everything, technique, fundamentals, what our goals were, how we were going to get everything accomplished. These two young ladies really got on board, and it's a unique situation to have two seniors in that scenario that our willing to make the adjustments and make the changes. They really made our team better. They grew, they improved technique-wise, they improved their leadership, and they were a huge impact on the success we had. We're going to miss them a lot - they are irreplaceable.
Griselle Lopez Pereira on the substitution mix-up in game two: I thought it was the rotation before, but it was the rotation where I have to get out. And the middle comes in to serve, and I was still in while she served, and I didn't get out in time.
Shahrzad Firouzabadian on the momentum changes: There were just a couple little mistakes that happened that we could have obviously done differently. As coach said, we know we can play better than what happened. But in volleyball it's back and forth, back and forth and it just happened that it was on their side, the momentum, when it was 26-26 and it could have just as easily been on our side.
Purdue head coach Dave Shondell
Opening Statement: We're really excited to win our first match of the tournament. It's been a nervous week trying to prepare for a good VCU team that we were not real familiar with. We knew they had some outstanding players and good athletes, and we hadn't seen them. But they had a great season, and we knew that they would come out and compete very very hard against us. I thought for the first two games they played at a very very high level and competed and played with intensity and intelligence and made it very difficult. I felt we were fortunate to win the first two games. And then I thought we loosened up a little bit after the first two and played pretty well in game number three. We are playing three freshmen quite a bit that played in their first NCAA tournament match. I thought that they fared pretty well in that one. Overall, we are excited to win. It's never easy to win in the NCAA tournament, and we knew that VCU was going to come out and really really play tough volleyball. I was impressed with their defense, I was impressed with their outside hitting, and yet their middles, who we really weren't overly concerned about coming in, were the players who really played well against us at times. We're just excited to win and be able to move on and look forward to playing tomorrow night.
On his team's nerves: I think we got a little more comfortable with the match. The longer it goes, the more you should begin to relax and play. Our passing was pretty solid all night long. And if we can get the ball to Renata, then she normally makes good decisions and gives our kids good balls to hit. I think we did relax a little bit as the match wore on, which allowed us to get into the flow.
On the quick turnaround: The good thing is it's equally tough on everybody, so it's not like you're behind the eight ball and the other team's been preparing all week. We have not done anything in practice for anybody but VCU. We were feeling like we had to prepare 100 percent for them. We looked at a little bit of tape on some of the other teams, and I don't know, I couldn't guess who's going to win this match tonight. But we'll have one person scout one team tonight and the other watch the other, and then we'll go back and watch tape well into the evening and come up with a game plan. And we'll practice tomorrow and go out and play. I think sometimes there's too much put into scouting and preparing and putting a game plan together at this level. The most important thing is making sure your team can go out into the match and make adjustments as the match is going on. You have to have that kind of team that has the ability can see things, recognize things, take coaching from the bench, but more importantly, do things on their own on the floor. I think that will be the key to tomorrow night's match.
Danita Merlau on her first game: I definitely was nervous just because it was my first NCAA tournament, and playing a team that wasn't in our league, we really didn't know what to expect. They kind of played a different style of ball, but after the first couple of points my team took control and took care of me and made me feel at ease. Once you get playing, that's all you really think about, so the nerves wore off.
Renata Dargan on VCU: I give props to VCU. They came out and played with everything they had. They were really tough in the first two games. You could tell we were a bit nervous. A couple mistakes that we made we wouldn't really make normally during the season. At the same time, we built on what we were doing well. Our passing was great tonight. That's one of the strong points of our team. I think overall we played solid, but we know that tomorrow night is going to be pretty tough. It's going to be two possibly really tough teams that we could play.
