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NCAA WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL CHAMPIONSHIPDecember 20, 2019Kelly SheffieldTiffany ClarkM.E DodgeMadison DuelloPittsburgh, Pennsylvania THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield and student-athletes Madison Duello, M.E. Dodge and Tiffany Clark. KELLY SHEFFIELD: Playing for a national championship here. Excited for the opportunities in front of all of us, and the seniors here that are to my right, they get to end their season with a great match against an unbelievable opponent. So it's a big challenge in front of us and so we're certainly excited to take it on and see what we can do. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. How do you defend against a player like Kathryn Plummer, when she's able to put up such huge numbers against Minnesota last night and really just all season long, how do you even game plan for that? TIFFANY CLARK: I think she's a really good all-around player. She's really smart with her shots. You can tell she plays beach. She's a good vision of the defense. Not playing from behind in terms of our defensive mentality, knowing that, yeah, she just made that crazy shot, sharp cross, but we're not going to change our entire defense because she made that shot. Just sticking to what we know, staying stable. Q. You don't get much of a break. You have to defend against Yossi last night and now you have Kathryn Plummer and the rest of Stanford. How much does it actually prepare you guys to have played a hitter like Yossiana Pressley and then you get to turn around and face KP? M.E. DODGE: I think leading up to this point we've had to play against a lot of tough outside hitters. You have Mac May from UCLA, we had Hollann Hans and Yossiana Pressley and now we get Kathryn Plummer. Leading up to this point we had other great outsides to get us ready for this moment. So like Clark said, not changing our defense, staying stable and kind of getting after it and I think it's really prepared us well at this point to this point. M.E. DODGE: This is what we live for, playing against really good outsides. This is when the defense can ball and make those amazing digs. Really looking forward to it. Q. How important has your serving been to your success this year and how important will it be against Stanford tomorrow night? TIFFANY CLARK: I think in previous years we haven't been that much of a threat with serving but we made a focus of that in the offseason because that would get us to the next level. I think we're the best serving team in the country with that aggressive mentality and we pride ourselves on getting people out of system. It's going to be important tomorrow night as is any night getting them out of system and getting the setter on the run. M.E. DODGE: Going off that, our serve sets up so much. It puts our blockers up into a really good situation and we can defend out of it. It's a first contact. It sets up the whole rally. Like she said we've really prided ourselves on the whole season and they've done a great job so far. Q. Madison, how much did you know Jenna and Audriana, I don't know if Liberty ever played Saint James, I don't know that she did but I know you have club teams how much did you cross paths how cool is it that you're in the offseason? MADISON DUELLO: To be honest, we didn't really play each other much in high school but we would see each other at tournaments. I think it's cool to have so many people from our area which is, not really in the middle of nowhere, but it's not a big volleyball powerhouse like coasts or Texas, something like that. It's cool to have so many athletes at the national championship. Q. With Stanford having so much experience in the national championship game and having all those titles to their name, what gives you guys the belief in your locker room that this is the year for Wisconsin volleyball? TIFFANY CLARK: I don't know. We're just feeling good vibes right now. I think we're on a roll right now. We have our rhythm and we're just having fun with the game. Like I said to you last night, we play really well when we're having fun and when we're having, when we're being competitive. So I just think that special mixture of those two is what is making us really unique and special right now, and I think we can just continue that dominance. M.E. DODGE: I think just remembering that, yes, we're playing for a national championship but not making the situation bigger than it is. It's volleyball. And if we just stick to the basics, you know, everything will fall into place. So just remembering that we're playing volleyball is huge and we're pretty good at that. So I think that's a good mentality going into tomorrow. MADISON DUELLO: I agree with everything they've said, living in the moment, talking about that the whole postseason living in the moment taking in the moments of how big the crowd is and how awesome it is that our sport brings in so many fans. Q. Who in your opinion has a better O line, the Badger football team or the Badger volleyball team? ALL STUDENT-ATHLETES: Definitely the Badger volleyball team. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach. Q. Talking to some of the Stanford players they say one of the things about Dana that's so amazing is she's a 6'8" player but she moves like she's 5'11", six foot, just has such great mobility. Can you put in perspective how, I don't want to say she's a unicorn, but she's a pretty rare type of player with her ability at her size. Can you kind of put that in perspective? KELLY SHEFFIELD: You know, I think as we kind of move along, you see taller and taller athletes that are able to move and are real athletes beyond -- sometimes you'll get some tall people, male or female, that if they were a smaller size, maybe they'd want to be certainly at the level they are or maybe even be playing sports, the height is their thing. Dana, the heighth isn't her thing. It certainly helps her. There's no doubt about it. But she would be an all-American if she was four inches shorter, I think, five inches shorter. She's an incredible athlete, a unique competitor, and unbelievable learner. She learns very, very quickly. And all of those things is the bigger reason she's the athlete she is. More so than her heighth. I think those things are the underreported things about her. Q. There's a lot to be said about how much experience Stanford has in these types of situations but when you look at your team, a lot of them have national team experience, Dana was on the team that went to Tokyo and you're competing in the Big Ten and how much do you think all of that helps coming into a final where on the stage they haven't quite been before but they've been on stages that are awfully similar? KELLY SHEFFIELD: Our team's not going to flinch tomorrow. I've been around them enough. I know them well enough to know. Now, that doesn't mean that we're going to win. That other team on the other side of the net is a special team. Very well coached. They'll come in with a lot of confidence. I'd be surprised if the stage is too big for our group either. That's one of the things that there's a lot -- got a large junior and senior class. Big Ten is a pretty tough conference and they played in front of big crowds and they've played match after match after match against really elite teams. So whether our best is good enough, I think we'll find out. But I don't think this stage will be too big. That's right. The Stanford team, they've been through here a lot. What they've done is really, really impressive. You kind of think about it. We played them in 2016 when this senior class were all freshmen at our place in the regional finals. We're up 2-0 on them, and they had one senior and they came back and won the next three to go to the Final Four and they win a championship there and then have a coaching change and a new coach comes in there and they're right back in the Final Four and playing for a championship again. They win the championship last year. They haven't missed a beat and it feels like it started a little bit with us at our place, but they've had a legendary career that group and the younger players have come in, filled the roles really, really nicely and it's been certainly seems like a seamless transition with coaching staff. It's all they've been through in their career, it's something to admire, because there's no way that it's easy. Q. Can you expand a little bit on what Tiffany said about the serving and the discussions you had before the season about getting better and what types of things you put in place to train them to get better? KELLY SHEFFIELD: Just something we felt like we had to get better at. We weren't -- our better servers probably last year weren't getting the ball in the court enough. And we had too many people that were just not putting in tough balls, just blowing bubbles out there. And against elite teams you've got to get that setter on the run. You've got to be able to -- any of these teams at the top level, if the setter has all of their options consistently, it's just the offense is just going to beat the defense. And you've got to sway that a little bit to your side. You've got to help your defense out by making their offense be a little bit more predictable maybe in who they're able to go to. So it's been a massive emphasis of ours to be one of the better serving teams. Tiffany is sitting there saying we're the best serving team in the country. I don't know if that's true. But what matters is that she believes that. I mean, that's what matters. And that every server is going back there with the confidence that they can go out there and execute and they can put in tough serve after tough serve after tough serve to be able to get, to wear teams down, to be able to get them out of system. I thought that was a big key for us last night was our serving, the confidence we were executing behind the service line was fantastic. We were putting pressure on them all six rotations, I thought. Every one of our servers got on some type of run throughout the course of the match. And you'll need that against a team like Stanford, certainly. Q. We touched on this last night, but what is it to you that separates this team as unique and special and with the ability to pull off a national title this year? KELLY SHEFFIELD: I don't know. I don't know if there's anything secret. We're playing good volleyball right now. We're playing good volleyball, where our players are confident. They're handling the tighter moments better than they had earlier in the season. When things are close, we're fine. We seem to be comfortable in that environment. That certainly was not the case early on. There's been an incredible amount of growth with our team in those two and three-point situations at the end of sets but they work hard to be able to earn that. We're pretty balanced. I think that makes it really difficult to defend. There's not a lot of weaknesses. I think both teams -- I don't think there's a lot of weaknesses for both teams. I think both teams are pretty complete. Both teams serve and pass the ball really well. They put up an amazing block up there out of system. Hentz is one of the greatest liberos our country's ever seen. They've got a really good setter that knows exactly what she needs to do, and most teams have really good setters. Both teams have great liberos and defensive players. Both teams have an aircraft carrier that can take an awful lot of the -- shoulder a lot if needed. But really other good parts that do their job. I don't know. It's two really good teams that believe in themselves playing really good volleyball right now. I think for the first time all season both teams seem pretty healthy, and I think that's going to make it pretty fun. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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