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NCAA WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL CHAMPIONSHIPDecember 12, 2018John CookKenzie MaloneyMikaela FoeckeMinneapolis, Minnesota THE MODERATOR: At this time we welcome the defending national championship Nebraska Cornhuskers. We will start with opening comments from Coach. JOHN COOK: It's been a really challenging journey for us to get here. I don't think any of you guys were penciling us in for the Final Four. But I got to give a lot of credit to these two, Mikaela and Kenzie, for their leadership. They've had to take over the biggest incoming group of new players we've ever had, eight, over half our team, are first-time Huskers. Everything is new to them. These guys have done an amazing job of leading this team, of creating a mindset that we're going to get better throughout the season. Then I think going through the Big Ten, we played seven top-10 teams in four matches, four in a row on the road. Really helped develop a toughness to this team, a belief that we could be a great team. I kept selling them on statistically how we were doing, but the team's got to believe. These guys got them to believe. Here we are in the Final Four. Excited to be here. It's our second trip to Minneapolis in less than a week. THE MODERATOR: Open it up for questions for the student-athletes. Q. Mikaela, when you've had the type of individual and team success that you have on the Final Four stage, how comfortable are you coming back here for another trip? MIKAELA FOECKE: The Final Four is always super fun to be at. There's so much hype behind it. I think Nebraska really embraces that. As a team we really embrace that. That's where we play some of our best volleyball. I think we're just looking forward to the game on Thursday. Q. Could each of you talk a little bit about what it's like to be a player at Nebraska. We're all expecting to see an awful lot of red in the stands tomorrow. Are you recognized when you go out in public? Do you get fan mail? KENZIE MALONEY: Yeah, the fans have completely exceeded our expectations. Coming in as a freshman, I had an idea of what it would be like, but like you said, we go out in public, people recognize you. They want pictures. It's really cool to know a lot of these little girls idolize you. You're just their biggest role model, so it's something special to think about. MIKAELA FOECKE: Echoing what Kenzie said, Husker fans love Nebraska volleyball. They kind of live and die with us. I think that's something really special. A lot of teams don't have that. We're so lucky to have that. To have so many people come all the time is unbelievable. Hoping for a good turnout tomorrow. Q. When I saw you in August, exactly that, I said, I don't have to worry about seeing them in December. Why did you get here? KENZIE MALONEY: I really just think that despite the losses that we had in the middle of the season, this team always believed we could get here, no matter what everyone was saying. We just really came together. We told one another that we genuinely thought we had a chance to make it here, we just had to fix little things we had been talking about. We weren't seeing any changes on the court, finally it clicked with everyone. We've been getting better and better ever since then. MIKAELA FOECKE: I think the exact same thing. Obviously some people didn't see us here right now, but we've done it, we made it. I think at the beginning of the season to where we are now is leaps and bounds. We had so many young players, players that didn't know Nebraska volleyball, our system, our culture. We just really tried to instill that in them. It's been a work in progress, but I think we're still headed up and in the right direction. Q. (No microphone.) MIKAELA FOECKE: I wouldn't say it was necessarily one player. I think the losses in the middle of the season really changed a lot of things for us, put our season into perspective for us. Q. Mikaela, looking at all you've accomplished at Nebraska, can you look back to when you were in high school, what other schools were recruiting you? Why did you pick Nebraska? MIKAELA FOECKE: I picked Nebraska because there's no place like Nebraska. In the end, I was comparing everywhere to Nebraska. The culture I wanted to be a part of, the people I wanted to be with were here. I'm so glad I chose it. Found one of my best friends. I got pushed to be a better volleyball player, made some amazing memories with my teammates. Q. Kenzie, you're the number one defensive team in the nation. How much pride do you feel about that and what has been the critical factor in that? KENZIE MALONEY: The critical factor is that coach always talks about defense wins championships. Obviously that statement has held true in the past. But for me as a back row player, it's really easy to play defense when our block is setting up perfectly every practice. We work so much on blocking every day. My job is really easy when we're setting up perfect blocks every time. It's really awesome to see back row players coordinating with front row players, really all six players coming together and being able to achieve that goal of being the number one blocking defense team is something really special. Q. Kenzie, when you think back to that winning streak at the beginning of the season, the current one, what areas do you feel most different about the team now? KENZIE MALONEY: I think just better connections on the court, communication-wise. I think early on, because there were so many new players, we weren't sure how to communicate with each other, how to play with each other, passing seams, stuff like that. Now looking at the end of the season, we're super comfortable, confident in our passing seams. We know what balls to play, what not to take. When we step on the court, it's more a mindset of confidence that we were kind of lacking towards the beginning of the season. Q. Kenzie, you like to say a lot that you worry more about your side of the net. When you're playing a team now for the third time in a season, does that change at all? Do you have to focus more on what you know about what they can do? KENZIE MALONEY: I mean, of course, we always take into account the scouting report, how Illinois is going to play volleyball. In the end, it's really only what is on our side that matters. If we come together and we play like the team we have been for the past few matches, then I don't think anyone could beat us. Q. Kenzie, you talked about the growth of this team. Does playing in a conference like the Big Ten almost force you to evolve throughout the season? KENZIE MALONEY: For sure. The Big Ten is a super challenging conference to be in. The season is always a grind. It can feel really long at times. But playing in such a tough conference really prepares us for these big matches because we're used to playing those big matches almost every week. I mean, it's really to our advantage to play in the Big Ten once we get to tournament time. Q. Speaking of the Big Ten, you played Illinois twice. What is it like to prepare for a team you've already met twice? MIKAELA FOECKE: I think preparing for a team you've already played twice can sometimes be quite taxing because you do know them so well. It's also to our advantage. I think we'll approach it like any other match, just get up there and go after it. KENZIE MALONEY: Yeah, I mean, both teams kind of know what to expect at this point, especially playing them for the past four years. But I don't know, I just think, like I said before, as long as we focus what we're doing on our side, we don't have to really concentrate so much on what Illinois is going to be doing. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. We'll open it up for questions for Coach. Q. You talked a lot about your two seniors there, leadership. With Lauren, even though she's still a young player, how did she develop physically and what leadership skills she had this year? JOHN COOK: Well, first part, the physical part, is just Husker power, our strength coach Brian, Lauren got Lifter of the Year, which is a very big honor on our team. It's presented in front of eight thousand people this year at the Red and White. We make a big deal about that. That shows you her work ethic. The leadership part, I sat down with Lauren this summer and I said, Lauren, when we get to January, we're only going to have two seniors, you and Lexi. So you're the one that's going to have to be a leader. You got to start thinking about this now. We've been talking about it and having conversations, I've been planting the seeds for her to be the leader once Mikaela and Kenzie are graduated. I think you have to be proactive in that. I think she's embraced it and something she really wants. Q. Jaylen, he went through an exhaustive interview process. You kind of knew what you were getting. Has he done anything that's surprised you? Has he brought anything that maybe you didn't expect? JOHN COOK: I'm really proud of Jaylen for coming in and really not missing a beat, taking a young team to another defensive level than where we were last year. It's pretty impressive. I give him a lot of responsibility. I was in total teaching, mentoring mode a lot this year, which I love to do. The other thing, he's young, but it's a guy that got hired the day he got finished playing. He got offered a job to coach with BYU men. He has a lot of energy, sometimes too much for me. So we got to tone that down sometimes. But I wanted somebody young that wanted to learn, would embrace the opportunity, did have energy, because he works really, really hard. So I really respect that. He's done a great job. Q. Has this team improved the most since the start of the season of any team you can remember coaching? JOHN COOK: Yes. Q. In what ways? JOHN COOK: I mean, just everything. I would say that this is one of the best serving teams we've had. In the beginning of the year, we were lollipopping it in. We have become a pretty strong passing team. If you told me at the beginning of the year we'd be the number one defensive team in the country, lead the Big Ten in blocking, I would have taken that bet in a heartbeat that we wouldn't. These two, when you're around them, they bring a mindset and attitude of confidence and work ethic that inspires their teammates. So we get a lot done in practice. They work very hard in practice. They're committed to the process of getting better every day. We're going to try to go get better in practice today. It stems from these two guys. Their ability to stay with it when we took some hits, so... I mean, just a lot of areas we've improved. Just an overall team progress throughout the year. We've done things we've never done before statistically. Q. How did Nebraska volleyball become such a phenomenon? What is it about the program and the community that have created this love affair? JOHN COOK: Well, it all started with Coach Pettit deciding to have volleyball matches after the football game. Have you been on the Lincoln campus? Where we used to play in the Coliseum was right next to the football stadium, so everybody would go out to the east, would have to walk by that Coliseum. He put up a barbershop signs "volleyball" with an arrow going in there. That's what started it. The second significant thing that happened is that NET, Nebraska Public Television, our booster clubs back in the '90s, starting funding the sponsorship to televise Nebraska volleyball so the whole state could see it. When that happened, the whole state bought into it. Of course, they were successful. Every young girl in Nebraska started growing up watching Nebraska volleyball. First started with a match here or there, then it became every match now is televised. I think the third thing was we moved to Devaney. We were in the Coliseum selling out. I didn't want to leave because it was such a home-court advantage. Coach Osborne, the athletic director at the time, had a vision to put volleyball over there. It doubled our attendance. It brought in a whole new generation, a younger generation, of families and young people. Our crowd was getting older because those people had season tickets for years and nobody could get new season tickets. We doubled the fan base, brought in a new generation. Across all levels of volleyball in the state, for example, this year seven high school teams are ranked in the top 100 in prep volleyball, seven out of Nebraska. We had 1.8 million people, probably more in Minneapolis. Kearney was ranked No. 2 in Division II, Western Nebraska was ranked No. 5 in junior college, Wayne State, those guys are always ranked up there. It's all the way through. Volleyball is in the DNA, we call it a state treasure. I have senators and Supreme Court justices texting me after matches that are following it. It goes to all parts of the state, all levels. Q. Certainly she's good throughout the entire season, but players like Mikaela who consistently play their best at the biggest stage? JOHN COOK: I've talked to her team about this. She has an inner confidence about her in everything that she does. She doesn't waver from it. Nothing wavering her from it. It allows her to perform at a high level at the biggest moments in matches. She has a deep belief. It's probably the way she was brought up, her parents, her family. She's a farm kid. She's got a huge family around her. She went to a small high school where she had to be a leader in that school. I mean, I watched her play high school. She's like this giant with all these little kids running around. But those kids looked up to her, idolized her. It's a combination of all those things that allowed her to have this deep inner confidence. Q. Chris said when he was offered the Illinois job, you told him he had to take it. At the time what made you think he was ready to be a head coach, what is your take on how he's done? JOHN COOK: Chris and Jen as the package, they helped us win a national championship. Chris was a little older, he did a great job for us. He was in the Big Ten for a couple years. I wanted to keep him for another year or two, but I've been in this long enough to know that a job like Illinois doesn't come open all the time, that if he had a shot to get it, he had to go. Obviously it was a good hire by the AD. Q. You were very realistic about the expectations you had for this team at the start of the year. At what point did you think this was a team that could make the Final Four? JOHN COOK: I started thinking after we beat Penn State, and I kept looking at the stats compared to last year, we were leading in several categories this year. Then I thought, Okay, if Nicklin can continue to improve, we got a shot. So we spent a lot of time on what we did all year, developing and improving Nicklin, getting her to play free, not worry about being a freshman at Nebraska, all that. I think it was a combination of those things. Then, you know, we had some big wins down the stretch. Purdue was a big match. Of course, getting through the regional, which I thought was the toughest regional in the country. Everybody agrees with that. Probably even Lee thinks that. Q. What are your biggest concerns going into the match about what Illinois is good at? JOHN COOK: They're playing really well. It's going to take a great effort on our part. We know that. I mean, they're solid in all the areas. They remind me a lot of us. I think it's going to come down to which team can win the big points at the end of games, take the big swings, make a play, make the big plays that you guys will all write about. Q. With you talking about not many people thinking you'd be penciled in here, were you surprised at all where you ended up being seeded? Did you get any explanation for the overall seeding? JOHN COOK: No, I didn't get any explanations on anything. Nothing ever surprises me in the NCAA tournament. That committee has a tough job to do. They got a lot of things they got to balance. I don't necessarily agree with some of the parameters they have to work around. But we're just happy -- like I tell our team, the NCAA is holding a party, we just want to get an invite. We don't care, we just want to get to the party and go for it. The tough thing was having so many Big Ten teams on one side of the bracket, because I thought there were five teams that could be in this from the Big Ten. Yeah, I mean, again, we could have been -- we played more ranked teams than anybody I think, probably more top-10 teams than anybody. We had a very tough schedule. I think the RPI is flawed. Well, that's a whole 'nother discussion sometime because there's got to be a way to balance out when the Big Ten is beating up on each other every week, there's got to be a way to balance out the RPI. For example, Kentucky played two ranked teams after September. Florida and Missouri. We're playing a top-10 team every week. So I just think they've got to look at that because the Big Ten Conference is taking it to a whole 'nother level right now. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Coach. JOHN COOK: Thanks, guys. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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