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NCAA WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL CHAMPIONSHIPDecember 19, 2015John CookAmber RolfzenKelly HunterMikaela FoeckeOmaha, Nebraska Nebraska - 3, Texas - 0 (25-23, 25-23, 25-21) THE MODERATOR: We'll go ahead and get started with an opening statement from coach. COACH COOK: Well, it's hard to put into words the environment tonight, the setting, Nebraska versus Texas, and the crowd, national championship match, ESPN, the whole -- everything else that went with it. For us to come out and play a great match against a great team, it was just awesome to see. It was just awesome to watch. So I can say I'm really proud, which I am, but I'm really more proud of this team on the journey they took to get to this point and to be able to come out and trust it and play their best match. THE MODERATOR: We'll open it up for questions. Q. Please tell us what you think Mikaela did to have the kind of offensive success she did, like, specifically, what was she doing? And then I would also like Kelly to respond to that, too. What were you doing that you think allowed Mikaela to do so well? COACH COOK: Well, we had a pretty good matchup in the first two games and Texas rotated and tried to get 27. And because, I don't know how to pronounce her name, but, so, they changed that matchup in game three. And it worked a little bit. Mikaela slowed down. But she was on fire the first two games and her and Kelly were in a very good rhythm. And I think that, and I've seen Mikaela do this over and over this season. So this wasn't anything new, but we have seen her do that in some other big matches. And she's just a powerful hitter and she uses the whole court and she was on fire tonight. KELLY HUNTER: I'll echo what coach said. At first, Mikaela was up on a smaller blocker, so obviously, that's a little bit easier than having a big blocker in her face. But all season, Mikaela and I, we have just been talking about what kind of ball she needs and I think we figured it out and it's been clicking at the end of the season and it obviously helped and worked tonight. Q. You've talked a lot this season about faring well in the championship points. This was a match where the first two sets were tied into the 20s. What did you guys do to be able to execute sort of on those knife edge points? COACH COOK: My whole message tonight was we do four drills pretty much every day in practice and I call them national championship drills. And I told them, I said, just pretend you're in the drill, because it's going to happen. And every situation where it was close, the situations those drills that we work on happened and we executed. I said, just trust your training that you've been doing for the last three months and we executed really well. Q. Everybody focuses on the fact that you guys are very physical and but you passed tonight to stay in system and it seems like all season you guys have been a very good passing team. Can you talk about the importance of that in what you do in training and how it translates to this? COACH COOK: Well, I learned, I probably learned, we learned a lot last year how important passing was, because we got the regional finals and we lost 10 matches last year. And our passing broke down. So, we made a commitment we were going to become a great passing team and we designed a system that I thought allowed us to have the best passers on the court and sometimes we only passed with two, but those two are great passers. And Kelly doesn't move her feet very well to get to the ball so I told our team we got to pass her perfect, so. KELLY HUNTER: Ow. (Laughter.) COACH COOK: But if you can pass to get the setter in a rhythm and we can spread the attack, and those guys did a great job. They have all year of the I cannot remember a match where we -- about the last game I can remember is against Kansas we broke down a little bit in game three. But we have been really solid all year in that area. Q. Congrats on the national championship this year and given everything you have coming back next year, when does the talk for back to back start? COACH COOK: I'm not going to go there. I've been through that. And each team's a new team and a new journey and but we'll start on that in January. But we're going to lose four really great seniors who, two of them had very important roles in practice and off the court in Meghan and Alicia. And again, if you could have seen our last match against Penn State when I put Alicia in, the crowd went nuts with the big O and it shows you how much respect she has and she's going to start basketball practice tomorrow. And Kelsey Fien, who for two years didn't play, and gets the final point, I think against Kansas and the final point tonight. And just to see her development was really rewarding as a coach. And CeCe Hall played her two best matches of the year this weekend. And she's been an up-and-down middle for us and I always would kid her that you know, it -- Europeans don't understand what this is about and this national championship. But I think CeCe has been around us long enough and the fact she's been around Nebraska, I think she really understood what this all means and how much it means and to see her play like she did tonight was, it was one of the highlights for me this season. Q. Mikaela, can you talk about the confidence you've had as a young player and especially to come into a stage like this and then John, if you could follow just how confident she has been as a youngster. MIKAELA FOECKE: I think I get a lot of confidence from my teammates and Kelly sets the ball really well and we have so many great players that I'm not afraid to go up and swing because I know that they have my back. Justine tells me every time, "I got your back. Swing hard. I'm going to cover you." And that's just really reassuring as a hitter to know that your team's right behind you. COACH COOK: One thing we talk about is being resilient and when things aren't going well, can you stay in the fight. And Mikaela's a natural at it. And I never see her get down, I have never seen her get down in practice. She's just very positive and going on to the next point. And I think that not only helps her as a player but I actually think it really helps other players on our team and probably helps me a lot, because the longer you coach you start seeing all the things you do wrong and it's nice to see people that are believing they're going to win the next point. Q. Kelly, what will you remember about winning a championship in your hometown? KELLY HUNTER: There was one point, I don't know when it was, but I know Amy Neal was back to serve I think we had game point, and I can't remember who said it, but they said, "I thought my eardrums were going to pop." And just playing in front of the fans that we get to play in front of every home match is honestly unreal and a lot of teams don't see that. And just knowing that how much they love us, whether we're losing or winning, it just means so much to have that fan support behind us. Q. Yesterday you said that the key to this match would be attacking the red zone and winning the system battle. You controlled those two areas? COACH COOK: I would like to have had Kadie get a few more kills in the red zone, but Texas did a nice job on her, but I think the key was -- and 27 had 11 kills tonight, hit .500. So most of her swings were over there. But I think we touched their middles on their slides and they got a couple nice kills, but we slowed them down and got some touches and our middles I think hit for a very high percentage behind Kelly tonight. A couple times they had two blockers out that they were trapping it and amber and CeCe still found a way to get a kill. So, I felt like we held our own and Texas probably had the advantage on us in that area, but we held our own enough tonight and I think we definitely won the out of system battle. I think we won most of the long rallies and some of those rallies might have been worth two points, because it got the crowd energized and it probably deflated Texas a little bit, because they were working so hard and to lose that rally. So that's what I told the team, I we got to win that out of system battle tonight. Q. Kelly and Amber, growing up in Nebraska, you've been surrounded by the whole Nebraska/Texas thing and amber you played in matches the last couple years where Texas has been really successful against Nebraska, for both of you, what does it mean to you? Does it mean anything extra to be able to win this title against Texas? AMBER ROLFZEN: Yeah, obviously I know that that rivalry is there, but never being in the Big-12, I never really knew what it was like. But we always know that there's those teams that the crowd's going to get really riled up for and this is one of them. I think they are one of the why we did so well. They were behind us the whole time, they never gave up on us we never gave up on ourselves and that's just a really great feeling to beat a rival. KELLY HUNTER: I just got like texts and tweets from everyone like, you need to beat Texas. Like Amber said, we weren't a part of that rivalry, but I know coach said it before, it's part of our DNA as being from Nebraska. So you can just feel that rivalry out there. Q. Couple parts to this question. One, besides Kelly's foot work, can you talk about her match tonight and her overall season as your starting setter? COACH COOK: Well, I red shirted her last year and I told the ESPN people when they interviewed me, that I thought it was one of the way she handled it was one of the greatest examples of a player trusting a decision, a very tough decision, because I think Kelly felt like she could have played last year. But we felt that was best for the program and we did it. She never batted an eye and she worked hard. Tonight, typically we try to have a game plan and I try to give her feedback but tonight I said very little to her, because I just felt like she was seeing it and she was in a rhythm and she was magical tonight setting the ball. And she's, there were three All-American setters here this weekend, Kelly's not one of them, but she's a national champion setter. Q. I can't remember being at a Final Four press conference like this where the Most Valuable Player has not gotten more questions. So, please, Mikaela, would you help me with one other thing here. You walk in there, it's the largest crowd in NCAA history, every reason to be scared out of your wits because they're all Nebraska fans, that's not necessarily a great thing, but were you nervous, and if no, why not, and if yes, how did you get over it? MIKAELA FOECKE: No, I was not nervous. I think it was because I know that those 16,000 fans that were out there tonight were all supporting us and had our backs. They wanted it just as bad as we did and knowing that makes it a lot more easy to play. Q. Amber, Texas has these great middle blockers, what's the satisfaction that you guys were both able to slow them down and then yourself get some kills on the slide play tonight? AMBER ROLFZEN: Well, like coach said, there's the four drills we do every day, so before our match today coach said, one of the big keys is going to be middle versus middle. We knew that their middles were probably their go-to's if they had a perfect pass and in order it to beat them we had to slow them down. And I think me and CeCe and our pin blockers as well did a great job of slowing them down and stopping their game. Q. We heard a lot about what the tickets were being resold for or some of them anyway, is scalping now a reality in Nebraska women's volleyball? COACH COOK: It's actually been going on for a long time. I can remember when we were in the Coliseum, Penn State, 300 bucks. Of course, there was a lot less tickets. But I know, I know there was, we our director of ops was getting bombarded for ticket requests. Before Thursday's match and then the last two days. It's a big deal in this state. It's pretty cool though that women's volleyball people are scalping tickets to get into a match. And I think they got their money's worth tonight. I think it was a great match and great environment. It's great support the sport. KELLY HUNTER: I just think it's crazy to hear not only that those tickets are being scalped, but what they were going for, because the demand was just crazy, just because everyone in this state wanted to be here. That to me was like the craziest part about it, was how much they were going for. Q. (No microphone.) COACH COOK: I heard 300 something. 450? You heard a thousand. Wow. They love us, I guess. (Laughter.) Q. You guys score your 24th point in the last set, they score a couple points. What was the talk in the huddle after you took that last timeout? COACH COOK: What was it, Amber? This is probably the first time Amber listened in a timeout was this one. AMBER ROLFZEN: Well, actually I was going to say I didn't hear anything he said and I didn't hear anything Coach Chris said but I think we all just looked each other in the eye and we didn't really care what the score was, we knew we had match point and we knew we were going to win. So, basically, it was just go out there, fight, get this next ball, because we're going to win. MIKAELA FOECKE: I think, no matter what was said in that huddle, there was no doubt that we were going to win this next point. And coach talked about those drills we do every day. One of them is FBSO for first ball sideout. So when we get that serve receive, we want to put it away right and that's what we did. Q. To the best of your memory, how does this team rang as far as a team that has improved from the start of the season to where they ended the season? COACH COOK: It's number one. And I've been telling them that and for where we started and then of course after Texas, I mean that's why we play those early season matches we got to learn about our team and what we got to do. Once we made that change, it wasn't smooth for awhile, but ever since that Minnesota Wisconsin weekend, this team has continued to go like this. And I'm not sure at the beginning of the year I thought we could win a national championship, but after that weekend and I saw what we started doing to teams, and the level we were playing at, at Illinois, at Purdue, Penn State, at Michigan, which was a huge match. They just kept going like this (Indicating). And they played a great match against Washington last week. Kansas, we weren't super sharp. Kansas had a lot to do with that. And we played our best match of the year tonight. So I think you got to say that, in my opinion, it's the, this team has really maxed themselves out and I told you guys, you guys that cover us every day, I can't remember when we have had a bad practice and they haven't come in and worked. And I got to kick them out of the gym and they love to be in the weight room and all that stuff. They have really embraced the journey and they have worked really hard and they have improved. THE MODERATOR: All right. Thank you all. COACH COOK: I just want to thank all you guys. This is my, I don't know how many Final Four action are but my third one here in Omaha and this is the biggest, most intense, I feel like there's the most interest and ever and I just want to thank all you guys, because this is, this is a big time event and it feels like it. And a lot of it goes to you guys. So thanks for all your work and coverage of volleyball. It's great for the sport and it's great, these young women deserve it. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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