2021 DI WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL CHAMPIONSHIP - 1ST & 2ND ROUND

December 2, 2021

Tim Horsmon

Maura Collins

Mahalia Swink

Dayton Flyers

Holloway Gymnasium

Press Conference

Dayton 25-20, 25-21, 24-26, 25-23

Marquette

TIM HORSMON: I shared with them that I probably lost it (his voice) with all those mis-serves in set three.

Just really proud of our team and our players. We just talked about our last few weeks being probably some of our best practice, maybe the last two weeks. We have a great bunch, and I thought they competed really hard today.

They were connected. They played confidently. They were just a lot of fun, and it was a great match. I think it was a great match, if spectators were watching, for them to see. I know Marquette is banged up and they're really well-coached, even in that situation, and do a great job, so it's a great win for us and our program.

Excited about playing tomorrow.

Q. To come in here and win in the opening match, maybe necessarily thinking that on paper you weren't projected to win, how did you center that and take that and use that to come out on top?

TIM HORSMON: Well, I'd love to start -- we didn't think we weren't projected to win. We felt like we had really, really good players, and we thought it was going to be a great match, but we did believe we were going to win. The expectations of where we were, I think they fulfilled that and did a great job of that.

Again, Marquette had a great year. They're a talented group. Again, really well coached. They've had a lot of great wins over the years.

But I was confident that we had a really good shot to win today.

MAURA COLLINS: I'd start by saying knowing that other people didn't expect us to win, we thrived being the underdogs in that situation, and like to have no weight on our shoulders in that moment and to get to go play free and just have fun I think was what really allowed us to have so much fun and thrive and play free.

MAHALIA SWINK: I think we just kind of talk a lot in our mental training just about trusting our training, and I think we kind of knew we did expect to win if we played how we wanted to play on our side of the net, so I think trusting our training, going out there and playing free is what happened out there tonight.

Q. Tomorrow evening an exciting chance to move forward and a chance to keep moving forward in the tournament. What are your thoughts? How does the team circle up again and keep swinging?

MAURA COLLINS: I think building off the energy we had tonight in terms of being more of the underdog. We're excited for the challenge of whoever wins tonight to get to match up against them tomorrow and to kind of carry over that feeling of playing fearless and playing with love for the game and love for each other and going out and competing.

MAHALIA SWINK: I think we talked about it after in our postgame talk in the locker room, but just at this level teams are going to make plays, they're going to make big digs, big hits, and we can do the same thing. We are an underdog, but we are pretty good, and we've trained for this, and this is the moment we wanted, so we're here and we're excited to get after it tomorrow.

TIM HORSMON: Our kids were in this position last year. We were in the second round, and we lost a match to No. 6 or No. 7 Washington in five and had our chances in the fifth set. So they've been here. They know what this situation is and what it's like.

For me, I played in this gym before and it's a great environment. If it is Purdue, it's going to be a great crowd, and it's going to be a lot of fun.

I'm excited for our players to play in a true college atmosphere and to play at that level, to move on to the sweet 16.