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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN VOLLEYBALL MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 15, 2014Kelly SheffieldCOACH SHEFFIELD: This past weekend, pretty good weekend, we had our moments where we played pretty well defensively. Some other moments, other times we were not quite where we needed to be. Ball control continues to get better and better. Pass work with Coach Dildine is really paying off. Huge weekend again for Courtney Thomas. I thought she was fantastic. We got our middles involved a little bit more offensively this past weekend. Short week coming up. We leave town tomorrow afternoon. I don't know if we play two top six teams in a span of 24 hours, but we have that in front of us, and we are looking forward to that. Southern Cal is a very powerful, very good team. Bricio has one of the best serves, if not the best serve, in college volleyball, very dynamic. Nwanebu is going to be an absolute handful out there on the right side, big attacker. They have got a couple nice freshmen that are coming in there and doing a good job, they run at 6‑2, both of these teams do, 6‑2 offense. So a lot of attackers coming at us. And Washington may be as good of a serving team as there is in the country. So we are looking forward and excited about the opportunity in front of us. Q. A lot of success was built on your serving game. How do you feel about your serving so far? COACH SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think for six rotations, I think we're pretty good right now serving. I thought last year we had about four rotations that we were putting pressure on. I think all six rotations‑‑ five of six rotations I think we're putting pressure on. That's an area that I would say that we're continually getting better at. Q. What do you imagine the intensity level will be like this weekend against such a good team? COACH SHEFFIELD: Yeah, great teams. I think any time that you get a Big Ten, Pac 12 teams going at each other, it's probably a little bit more, I would say the kids, they are a little bit more perked up. PI think when you're talking about two historic programs like Washington and Southern Cal, teams that have won national championships, two of the best coaches in the game; our players, everybody in our program knows what those two teams have done. So it's an opportunity to measure yourself against some of the best. And so I think our kids are pretty jacked up going into this weekend. Q. Jacked up? Are they ready for it? As far as everything you've tried to do, setting up to this point? COACH SHEFFIELD: I think so. You know, these are two‑‑ passers are going to have an awful lot coming at them but I think our group, they are experienced there. They want to go up against the best. We have got some things that they are going to have to handle, as well. We don't think we're slouches on our side, either. But these are really good programs that are always consistently very well prepared and some of the best players. We talked about the players for Southern Cal, I didn't even talk about the national Player of the Year that's coming back for Washington. So some of the absolute best players in the college game and some of the players that will be carrying ‑‑ will probably be wearing the USA jersey for quite a while after their careers are done. There's a lot of talent on the other side of the net. Q. When you say Bricio might be the best server in the country, what does that mean? Speed, placement? COACH SHEFFIELD: I think arguably she's one of the top two or three, that's for sure. It's a hybrid serve. It's a very, very different serve. It looks like a flow serve but she puts so much pace on it, it's about 60 miles an hour so it's on you very, very quickly. It drops. It goes deep. It has some side motion to it. It just moves a lot, and you do that along with the speed, it's very, very difficult. We've charted, I don't know, close to a hundred of her serves, and she works the entire court. Q. Is this the best way to prepare for the Big Ten, playing quality opponents immediately? COACH SHEFFIELD: Yeah, you know, there's certainly not a lot of turnaround time before you get into Big Ten season. But when you get a phone call from these two teams that are wanting to play you, I don't want to turn that down. I think it's great experience, great opportunity for us. Whether it's the first week or the fourth week, yeah, I think it absolutely prepares you for the Big Ten. The other challenging thing about these two teams is you're probably playing Southern Cal who probably runs maybe the slowest tempo offense in the pack and then the very next night, you're playing a Washington team that might be the quickest. And so it's really going to be a challenge for a defense and the timing of our blockers to be able to make that type of turnaround back‑to‑back. So like I said, it's a great challenge and opportunity. Q. Passing, serves, do you like the progression that you've seen in all those areas? COACH SHEFFIELD: Serve and pass game, yes. I think we are‑‑ it's a different passing system than what we had a year ago and that's putting a lot‑‑ we've had to put a lot of work in. Like I said, our passers have gotten a lot better. I think they are at a point where they are very competent seeing servers like this. You get to a point as an athlete and you say, all right, I want to test myself against the best, and we are going to see that this weekend. Defensively, no, I think we have a ways to go for us to have consistent effort there. I think when we are locked in defensively, we are really, really good. But that's been a part of our game that has kind of come and gone; and we've picked and chose when we are wanting to have that defensive mentality. So we go in there with that mentality this week and we'll get pummeled. But when we're locked in in that area, we're pretty good. Q. You guys have only dropped three sets in eight matches. Is that something that you preach to this team; like you don't want to win, but you want to win like you should win? COACH SHEFFIELD: We don't talk a lot about winning and losing. We talk about being prepared, knowing the scouting report, executing that, having the right mind‑set. And we think if we're going to play well on our side, the wins and losses will take care of itself. It's boring and sounds standard but it's just the way that we talk. We haven't always played well. We haven't always played the way that we feel like we need to and that's been kind of a challenge. So whatever it is with this team, when we've been locked in, we've been good and we've chosen some other opportunities to kind of test the waters and see how it is, and those have been the times that we've lost or we've been really, really close to losing. But I think every team and every year, it's a learning process and that's hopefully something that we're learning to work through and hopefully with some maturity, we'll continue to get past that. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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