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NCAA WOMEN'S REGIONALS: MADISON

December 9, 2016

Madison, Wisconsin

Stanford 3, Florida State 1

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Florida State head coach Chris Poole, junior Natasha Calkins, and junior Milica Kubura. We'll start with an opening statement from Coach, then questions for the student-athletes, and then questions for Coach.

COACH POOLE: It was -- it's exciting to be here. Obviously, we're -- you're always disappointed whenever you lose at the end. I think this team overcame a lot all year. I mean, we constantly were having to shift our lineup and make some changes because of different things that were going on during the season that we can't control. That's just part of the game. That's part of being able to step up and figure out a way to keep winning.

I told the girls that, you know, proud of the way they fought all year. We still won a lot of matches, and we beat some good teams. Obviously, Stanford is a very, very good program, literally ran into a wall with their size and their physicality, which is probably the biggest, most physical team in the country. We are on the smaller side. We knew that this year.

But at the same time, I felt like the girls played with a tremendous amount of heart and could have -- that third set, after just literally falling apart, we could have came out the fourth set and laid down, but they didn't, which is what has been incredible about this team is, even when we've been knocked down, that we continue to fight, and we continue to find a way to get back up.

So I was proud to see them, certainly not to finish with some of the mistakes we made at the end, but I was proud to see them fight back in that fourth set the way they did, and anything can happen whenever you put yourselves in that situation.

Q. Stanford was a team that you prepared for. Yesterday after practice, you guys were ready. There was a mentality that you're ready to take this on. Was there anything about Stanford that surprised you coming up today?
MILICA KUBURA: No, honestly, they're an amazing team. They're very physical, and they obviously have brains and intelligence. I'm proud of how my team fought. I just think that we didn't take control of our side enough. Nothing surprised us. We knew they were going to have amazing middles. We knew they were very physical. Nothing surprised us. We just didn't take advantage of little things they gave us.

This is very disappointing, but at the same time, I'm proud of my team.

Q. Natasha, so much is talked about with their size, their block. When you're out on the floor, what's that like facing them? You had some success, first and fourth at least. What's the key to beating their block or surviving?
NATASHA CALKINS: I think, when you're facing a big block, you just got to go out and swing. You can't think about it too much. Yes, you have to be aware when there's someone who's 6'8" lining up on you. You definitely don't want to swing right into their block. But the key is just to be aggressive, and I think we did a really good job of doing that, and just keep swinging no matter what and don't let like a big block intimidate you and just keep going after it.

Q. Can you talk about maybe what happened in the third set? The momentum change between taking the first set, putting up a convincing fight in the second and fourth. What was the difference in the third?
MILICA KUBURA: The entire season, we struggled with third sets for some reason. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we have that ten-minute break and we just lose the adrenaline. I don't know. It just -- we knew we needed to do a better job with it.

COACH POOLE: I think with this team, we would often within the same match, we would have a bad set. Again, that's the great thing about volleyball is you can have that and still rebound and play well. It's certainly something we were working on all year. It's something that the girls were aware of.

But it is -- you know, we were -- we didn't have a lot of different options on the sideline. So when the wheels begin to fall off in that situation, we've pretty much got to try to play through it because it's not like it -- particularly with us being another player down going into the tournament, is that we just didn't have many hitters. We were basically using everybody that was available to try to give us as much as we could.

I think the girls did a good job of being able to come back. It's just -- you know, I think sometimes you get into your head whenever the wheels start coming off, and it's easy to flatten out and not be able to get back in to sink that set. That's what happened again tonight.

Q. To either or both of you, despite your season ending right here, what do you want to say finally about this team and how far you've come despite all you've had to fight through this year?
NATASHA CALKINS: I think that's one of the things about our team is that we keep fighting. We've been down so many times, and we've faced so much throughout the entire year and even now. No matter what everyone's been going through, we've all just been trying our best to stay positive and get back on the court and play as hard as we can and try and ignore the pain sometimes. There's a lot of girls who they really gave their best effort like all season.

MILICA KUBURA: I think having 12 players -- we just talked about that. We had 12 players, and then sometimes we had 7 players at practice. So with that small team, it's really hard to pull together, but I think we did the best we could. Each player stepped up in some game, and I think that's very unique about this season, that every single player had a big impact.

COACH POOLE: Thank you guys.

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