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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN VOLLEYBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 28, 2013Kelly SheffieldTHE MODERATOR: Head coach Kelly Sheffield is here. We'll have opening comments and take questions. COACH SHEFFIELD: Last Wednesday obviously coming up with a win against a really good talented Minnesota team, ,back‑to‑back wins against top ten teams great effort from our kids. But we obviously played really well. And coming back yesterday against Illinois, losing to a really, really threatened well coached Illinois team probably their backs against the wall quite a bit for an NCAA tournament bid. It was a game we lost, lost three points weren't able to close the sets out the way we need to. Game three we really put it on them came down to executing when the games were off line and that's something we've been really good at most of the year. We weren't great at it yesterday and kind of got us. I think our outside plays, it's getting better. I think our team's getting better. This is a tough conference, but Deme Morales and Ellen Chapman, I think those guys had really good weekends. Ball control was solid. Taylor Morey had a great weekend, her best weekend in the past month. And so we're excited about this weekend, this coming weekend, second half of the Big Ten.  And we've seen everybody just about everybody and so now they've got tape on us. We've got tape on them. And like we told our team you can see who is improving the most that second half. We're excited about getting back at it and playing a really talented IU team was coming off a win against Michigan State. Top ten Michigan State team and Purdue, just beat Michigan and Nebraska. So those are two teams we beat the first round. We go back to their place and IU is coming off the biggest win of the year and probably no team other than Penn State that's hotter in our conference than what the boiler makers are. Q. Does this road trip week is it kind of a springboard you get a couple of big weeks at home coming up, is this a critical one starting off at second half starting off the Big Ten season? COACH SHEFFIELD: I think so. They're all obviously critical, but, yeah, you get to this second half if you will. You want to get going. You want to you want to try to find momentum whatever it is in conference and it's certainly tough in this league. But it's huge. We want to stay in the top third top half of the conference. We want to try to move up and we've got those abilities. We want to try to position ourselves are you a possible seeded team and for the NCAA tournament. So every match along that is important. We want to finish as high as we can start of the second half I guess it starts this week. Q. Is the win/loss trend of late is that a reflection of the youth of the team or reflection of a tough schedule? COACH SHEFFIELD: Probably both, to be fair. This is a tough league to get wins at. And every team is beatable. Whether you're at home or on the road, every team can, you can beat every team and every team can beat you. You're not playing one a week, you're playing two in a couple of days, and, yeah, that can be really tough‑‑ I don't think getting up for a match has been our problem, just it's about executing. Our team's ready to go every night. That's one of the things that's impressed me about this group they're really competitive and they want to‑‑ they're putting it all out there. Executing the game plan is something else. We haven't always been absolutely consistent with that, but it's not lack of effort. Our youth, I mean we got one senior out there. Illinois who we played yesterday had one senior as well that was playing a significant role. So two young teams that makes it fun for the future. But we're learning. All of this stuff, dealing with success, you know, and how to handle that and how to be ready every single night, it's a work in progress, we're getting better and that's what we ask for as coaches. Q. Will Crystal Graff play again this season? COACH SHEFFIELD: You've been really consistent with Crystal questions. I know she's a local kid and that's important. We're hoping. She had a procedure the other day and is back in the boots. And hopefully we'll get her here the second part of the season. Hopefully we're getting Caroline Workman back, who might be our best server on the team. I think both of them are progressing, I think we're a couple of weeks, few more weeks from Crystal. Caroline, who knows. She's probably about ready to get starting in practices. As far as major roles for crystal, that would probably be difficult‑‑ we're playing pretty well right now on the pen. We're really playing well on the pen. So I'm not so sure it's a save that's coming off the bench that's going to help us. It's added depth and she's been through this quite a bit and having another body, yeah, we'd love to have her, we're not counting on her. But we'll see. Q. Halfway point of the season, is the team where you expected them to be, maybe higher than your expectations, relative? COACH SHEFFIELD: We've had great moments. We've had great wins over really good teams. We're getting better. This team is really, really competitive. We're learning how to execute. We're learning‑‑ it's a work in progress. We've got our setter out there getting better all the time. Better connection with her hitters. She missed most of the preseason and first couple of weeks when we were really practicing. We're at a point where we're not getting a ton of practices in. It's a lot slower pace probably for most of the week right now, and especially when you're playing Wednesday, Saturday, Wednesday, Sunday makes it tough to string along some workouts. So we're getting better by watching film and maybe some walkthroughs, some slower paced things. And is it, are we where‑‑ we're probably a little bit further along than probably what I would have thought being honest going in. But I don't think we're‑‑ I think we've got as much room to improve as any team in the league. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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