|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
AUSTIN REGIONAL NCAA WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL CHAMPIONSHIPDecember 13, 2019Jerritt ElliottLogan EgglestonSydney PetersonAustin, Texas Louisville 3 Texas 2 HEAD COACH JERRITT ELLIOTT: Well, congratulations to Louisville. I thought they were very prepared coming in. Most importantly, they had a group of kids that fought extremely hard, and I felt like that was the difference in this match is that they were really connected and they were playing, and they had a purpose. You know, we did our best to come back in Game 5, but that's always a crapshoot in terms of ball bounces a couple ways. Statistically, they hit 219, and we had many opportunities to score in transition and couldn't do that. For me, it was one of the biggest keys is the competitiveness of this match, and they stepped up and played really well and served and passed well and Jones had a monster night. We knew that she was good and we couldn't contain her. Q. Logan, overall thoughts? LOGAN EGGLESTON: This team had such a great year, and to end like that -- they are a great team. I just wish we could have responded like we have been. SYDNEY PETERSON: Like Logan said, I love this team so much, and it sucks going out like that, but I do believe they played very well. Q. You got back into it the third set. What were the conversations between the fourth and fifth sets? What were the conversations like? The fans were into it. HEAD COACH JERRITT ELLIOTT: Yeah, we were trying to figure out, because Angel went down, so we had to figure out what we were doing in the lineup and kind of where we wanted to start. You know, we gave ourselves an opportunity to see it Asia would be healthy. She came back and played. You know, it was more of an execution side of the game. I thought early on in Game 5, we really panicked with some of our decision-making, and we were just kind of trying to get it immediately, and that could happen sometimes, and with a young group. But we didn't perform statistically that way all night and Game 5 was obviously our worst statistical performance of the night. Q. After you came back in the third and fourth set, what were you feeling and where did it get away? LOGAN EGGLESTON: I feel like we had momentum going forward. I think they started executing and we just weren't doing our side. Q. Did Louisville do anything surprising to you guys? Were they better than you thought they would be? SYDNEY PETERSON: They really played defense well and kept the ball alive and executed well. Q. I know the loss is fresh, but can you reflect on Micaya and what she's meant to you guys? HEAD COACH JERRITT ELLIOTT: She's been a big part of this program. She's in the record books for a lot of reasons. You know, she was someone that stayed here for her fifth year. She decent have to do that and we are very thankful for that. I think she grew up a lot during her years here, both on the court and off the court. I think her range and the way that she played, become pretty special, and she's ready to spring into her pro career now. So you know, it's fun to see where they grow to as an individual from the start to the finish. She's made a lot of strides in that area. Q. You had a young team. What lessons do you take into the off-season and what was your biggest regret? HEAD COACH JERRITT ELLIOTT: My biggest regret is I'm going to take full responsibility. I thought we did everything right. I thought they were in the right mindset going in. I thought they did everything and they were performing at a high level, but just for me, we have to find some leadership. We have got to be able to make sure that some people can take control of the court at a higher level. We've got a lot of great kids in our program. We've got a lot of great families in our program, and they are really a joy to coach. They want to learn. They want to develop. But the young players, part of this is learning to you to develop leadership and be able to demand change. I think this lesson will sit with some of these guys and they will have a chance to reflect on that. You know, with the seniors being gone, the sophomore class kind of jumps into that and the freshman class jumps into the leadership role what they want to become and how that is going to be transpired. They have got to be willing to kind of rock the boat sometimes, and it's a big part of that to be able to rally people and encourage them. And so I think they are in a good spot. I think there's a lot of trust with those captains, but for me, that's the biggest thing, is can we be tougher and can we be better -- a lot of times this year when things were going south, we were trying to find ways to control their mental psyche to respond at a higher level. You know, it would be great to see that personality the way it was in Game 4 and Game 5 against Santa Barbara be consistent. It's part of the process. It's part of growing up. It's putting in the due diligence. It's losing and failing. A lot of these young ladies haven't failed a lot, and that's my job as a coach is, is to embrace them and love them and really get them to a spot where they can learn from this. It hurts. It hurts for every player. It hurts for every staff member. It hurts for everybody in the administration that gave so much to this program. But you know, we've been in this situation before. Losing is part of this profession, and it's the fun part about how do you build those pieces to get back to be on top. We have got some great pieces. Does that mean we're going to get back? We'll see. But we've got the pieces to be able to develop that. I think we've got the trust, and I'm looking forward to it. Q. Tomorrow, you'll be two of the older people on the team. Where do you go from here? SYDNEY PETERSON: Time to go back to the gym and get better, honestly. LOGAN EGGLESTON: I just think we need to take this experience and really use it and learn from it and each the girls who are coming in, this is not what we want to feel anymore. We need to learn how to fight, how to win, how to get over this bump that we're in right now. Q. Is there anything that surprised you about the season overall, good or bad? HEAD COACH JERRITT ELLIOTT: Season started out awesome. Like we didn't know what we had with this young group and I thought their fight and the way that they kind of came into the season was really, really good. I thought we had that for long periods of time. Last month, it's been a little bit more of a challenge. We've been a little bit out of whack. It hasn't kind of gone as smoothly. We started to collapse a little bit. We were missing a lot of serves and our server C game really started struggling, with that, it becomes -- it makes it a lot more difficult to kind of win ballgames. Game 1, we had not hit any opportunities but we gave them 14 points off of errors and you can't do that at this point. Those errors need to be about three to four. When you give teams free points at this level, it's difficult. Q. Too early to pinpoint why? HEAD COACH JERRITT ELLIOTT: Yeah, there's a lot of different things. I think some of our weaknesses got exposed. They had not been exposed all season long. I think there's some execution side that we've had some players out for a long period of time so we lost some of our rhythm, and some players really kind of grew. I think Logan really grew up this season and ended up taking over some matches which was fun to see. I thought Bri started getting in there and doing some stuff. There's a lot of positives to this. It just didn't feel right, and I think they would admit to this in the huddle when things weren't going well, we didn't have that kind of grab each other's hand and let's go to war together. The fear of failure can be part of that. The fear of expectations can be a part of that. Not being in these situation where is there's high pressure and execution, and they are learning what it means to wear the Texas uniform and everyone plays out of their minds. The opposite didn't put those numbers up. Santa Barbara didn't do that. You get everybody's best shot, and you've got to raise your game to another level. Thank you, Media, for coming out and making this program better. We appreciate it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|