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NCAA WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL CHAMPIONSHIPDecember 17, 2015Ray BechardAinise HaviliTayler SoucieKelsie PayneOmaha, Nebraska Nebraska - 3, Kansas - 1 (25-20, 25-21, 20-25, 25-16) THE MODERATOR: We'll start with an opening statement from coach. COACH BECHARD: I would really like to thank the city of Omaha and the NCAA committee, University of Nebraska and all the hosts that are making this a really special event for our team. They treated us like we were one of the best and it was a really cool deal. I know the players feel that same way. I would like to congratulate Texas and Nebraska for advancing. Should be a great match on Saturday. We just weren't good enough tonight in a couple phases of the game. Our serving has been up-and-down a little bit all year, but our passing has been pretty solid, and those two things put us in a hole in the first two sets. We managed that better in the third set, but the fourth set got away from us a little bit. Couldn't be more proud to be represented with this group and the work we got done and I guess we can say that the three losses we had are to the teams that are playing for the national championship. THE MODERATOR: Open it up for questions, please. Q. Nebraska wanted to talk a lot about the performance of Kelsie Payne tonight. Would you talk about Kelsie's performance and then Kelsie, would you talk about your performance, please. COACH BECHARD: 22 kills, three errors on 33 swings. She hit .576 and everybody knew we were going to her. She was outstanding. And there's a reason while she will walk on the stage tomorrow morning as a first team All-American. I couldn't be more proud of this kid. She, we had her make a position change this past spring from middle to right side and she did an unbelievable job. She's just going to continue to get better. But I thought that performance was as good as any that we saw in either match tonight. KELSIE PAYNE: Yeah, it was a lot of fun to play in front of that huge crowd and it's easy to play well when you have people behind you that are playing even better and when you have liberos that are digging everything up and setters that are setting up every ball perfectly it's easy to have 22 kills, I guess, so. Q. What were they able to do defensively against all your other hitters? You guys ended up hitting 159 as a team, despite what Kelsie was able to do. COACH BECHARD: Well, when you don't pass the ball as well as we're accustomed to, we get pretty predictable and we made it tough on Dockery and Rigdon, because we gave them some stuff that was tough to deal with and then when you play a physical team that's organized like Nebraska, Ainise will be the first to say she could have spaced the ball a little better at times. We could have been a little smarter with some shot selection. So, yeah, we just weren't in system enough in system meaning our setter didn't have as many choices as she needed to have. But they did a great job on both our outside attackers. Q. Nebraska spreads the ball to a lot of attackers, but I don't know that a lot of people would have foreseen CeCe Hall having 10 kills on 18 swings. Where did she factor into your scouting report amongst all the other players that Nebraska puts out there? COACH BECHARD: We talked about balance all week. She doesn't have the kill per set as others but she's very efficient. And when you get a little bit spread and you get to thinking about number 2, No. 6, then they did a nice job, Hunter did a really nice job of finding her and she created some opportunities for them. Q. For any of the players in the first set there was 17-18 and it looked like you had them scrambling and then their girl chases the ball down to the scorer's table, cuts it back over the net and somehow it goes in and they win the point, it's 19-17 instead of tied. Do you remember that play and do you think that swung that first set at all, just sort of a deflating moment. TAYLER SOUCIE: It was a lucky play by them and it's always a momentum shift when you get the ball to roll your way one time and then that little bit of a difference kind of had us on edge and we weren't passing quite well enough to keep our team in system and point score as well, and then point score as well as we wanted to when we were serving. COACH BECHARD: I remember that play. I think that was absolutely a huge swing because it looked like it was an impossible angle and everybody that saw it said it was good and that should have been a play that we could have converted on at that point in that first set. That was a pretty big swing. Q. Ainise, it's still a raw loss that just happened, it's still raw, but give us some thoughts about the ride you guys had this season. AINISE HAVILI: It's been an unforgettable journey, really proud of this team, really proud of every single person on this team. We got better every day in practice. We got better every team we played. This sucks and everybody hates this feeling, but that comes with the sport and we're going to come back and work hard and comeback next year. Q. Kelsie, when you rotated out that final time, did you think that there was anyway that you would not be coming back into the match? KELSIE PAYNE: No, I didn't think that. Our team recently has been really good at coming back when it's late in the game, so I had every thought that we would make a run back in the end. But we didn't, so. Tough. Q. Yesterday you said that you promised your players they would get a match against Nebraska. Would you like to play Nebraska in the regular season? Would you like to get into a rotation with them? COACH BECHARD: Yeah, I think it would be a great idea. How scheduling goes, you know, we only have so many weekend that we deal with and we like to be at home and I'm sure they like to be at home. But it would make sense in my opinion because I think playing a team like that only makes you better and gives you an opportunity to work on things, so in situations like this, you might be a little bit better prepared next time around. But we saw Texas twice, we saw some other great teams within our league, but with the proximity with Nebraska, certainly it would make sense. Q. You talked a little bit yesterday about the need to serve very aggressively in order to take Nebraska out of system. Do you think maybe early you were a little bit too aggressive, seven service errors in the first two sets. You almost could have been taking that first game you would have been right there without all of the service errors. COACH BECHARD: Yeah, if you follow our team, you would know that we're an interesting serving group. But, yes, we had seven at the break and we only had two after that. So I thought that was a big part of us kind of getting things level in the third set and working into the fourth set. But, yeah, that was huge back to back maybe four in the first set, that when you look at a game that's kind of in the balance, obviously that's a big difference. But we got to go, we got to get people out of system so we got to go for it, but they served tough, too. They served in. So, this spring I'm guaranteeing you we'll spend a lot of time on that. Q. About the serving again, Nebraska speculated that maybe the crowd was a factor in some of the early jitters for you guys. Is that air, or was it just your own performance? COACH BECHARD: Crowd was, I thought the crowd was great. I think it's just not only the crowd, the atmosphere, the first time of being on this stage, but you got to adapt to that. We tried to put pressure on them each day in practice, but we don't have 17 thousand people dressed in red in our gym, so but we try to put a level of pressure on them and we'll continue to try to do that. Q. Kelsie and for all the players, what were the emotions like tonight just playing in front of that crowd and being on this stage as coach alluded to? KELSIE PAYNE: It was exciting. It's an awesome opportunity and we were pumped to get out there and play and the ball didn't fall our way we didn't play the game maybe we wanted to play, but definitely it's an awesome experience and like we said, I think we can just take this and run with it. We're going to make it a standard, not so much a goal any more. TAYLER SOUCIE: We're all really proud of how far we have come as a program and as a team this year, we started 19-0 which was awesome and then we had a loss to Texas and then we fought back and then another loss to Texas and we made a great run after that and made it all the way to the Final Four for the first time in school history so I think we're all just really proud to be here. AINISE HAVILI: Just what they said. It's been a great year, it's been fun. Really proud of this team. We fight hard and we showed that tonight in front of 17 thousand people, so can't ask for more. THE MODERATOR: Okay. Kansas finishes the season with record of 30-3 and we congratulate them. Thank you for being part of this year's championship. COACH BECHARD: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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