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NCAA WOMEN'S NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPDecember 13, 2012Hannah AllisonHaley EckermanJerritt ElliottBailey WebsterLOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY Texas – 3 THE MODERATOR: We'll begin here with an opening statement from Coach Elliott and then take questions for the student‑athletes. COACH ELLIOTT: Fans got their money's worth. What a battle. Congratulations to Michigan for an unbelievable run. Mark and his staff did a tremendous job, not only with this tournament but in preparing for our team. And I'm just so proud of our group that we've been good all year. I've been saying that we've been good in the crunch. You never see them give up. Even though we give up games, you could see they just wanted to stay in this routine and battle. And they made big plays, and I'm just so pleased. People have been questioning Sarah Palmer all year long, and I'll tell you what I think: I got the best libero in the country. Made some plays. I've got her back, and our team does as well. We did a good job in managing our game and defensively we stepped up and did a good job of eliminating their middles in Games 1, 4, and 5. Showed a lot of heart, a lot of passion, and executed when it counted. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student‑athletes. Q. Bailey, can you kind of talk about this match was so different a lot, set to set. Can you talk a little bit about what was different, especially in the second and third set, how you guys adjusted? Because the fourth set was a lot like the first set in terms of you guys dominating at the net. Can you talk about maybe what the differences were going back and forth strategy‑wise between you guys and them? BAILEY WEBSTER: I don't know what the difference was. But I know in the second and third sets we just weren't in our comfort zone. And when we're not comfortable and there's not 100percent there, whether it's confidence, aggression, anything, communication, then, like any team, it's going to begin to question or just not feel really comfortable. Once we got together and talked together, we were just like get back into our groove, get back into our game and play what got us here, and we were able to turn it around. Q. For any of the players, maybe Haley, have you guys played better than you did in the first, maybe the first and the fourth sets? Could you play much better than that? HALEY ECKERMAN: I think we always can play better than what we did. But we obviously‑‑ it worked. And we don't have to be perfect. And we just need to do what we need to do like whatever got us here. So whatever we had to do to win is what we had to do. Q. Do you guys have some sense of relief getting through a match like that? It was a really tough match, wasn't it? I imagine you're pretty tired right now. HANNAH ALLISON: Adrenalin helps a lot with that. We're still way up here. Maybe tonight we'll be really tired. But it was just a lot of fun and a lot of emotion in that match, a lot of emotion. It was tiring, but we are in good shape. That's what we do. We've played for three and a half months. So we're just glad that we came out with the win. It was worth it. Q. Bailey and Haley, were there times when they were just frustrating you? Because it seemed like they kept waiting for you to explode and make it happen and it took a really long time. BAILEY WEBSTER: No, I think that's part of the game. You have to be patient. And every ball, everything isn't going to be a kill. And although it would be nice if it was, but you know like every pass isn't perfect, every set isn't perfect, so for us to go swinging 100percent on every swing I don't think would be very smart. I think we were just trying to eliminate errors. And although it took a long time, it came. So that's what matters. Q. Hannah, you guys have sort of been a hallmark of this team that you could spread your offense out really well, and you have four players with double‑figure kills. Can you talk about having all of those weapons and especially in a five‑set match how that works to your guys' favor? HANNAH ALLISON: I think it makes it difficult for teams to scout certain players and try to stop one person because you have a lot of weapons to use. So it helps them balance each other. So not one person on a team has all the weight, not one person has to get all the kills. And I think that's the most important thing. For me, I can be a little bit creative with who I set, what play calls I make because I have so many players who can put the ball away. So that allows me to really spread that out and make us a little bit more unpredictable. Q. Bailey, if you would, you get a 4‑0 in that fifth set coming off the adrenalin winning the fourth and they tie it at 8, what was the coach's message to you at that timeout at 8‑8? And talk about the play on the 11‑point there you kind of skied over the block, and I think that gave you some momentum there. BAILEY WEBSTER: We just carried the momentum from the game before. And during that timeout, I don't know the exact words, but it wasn't much. Because we just needed to keep doing what we were doing. Needed to stay calm. They're a great team. Obviously they're going to score their points. It's going to be a battle. We just remained calm and kept doing what we were doing and came out with a win. And on that point, honestly, I just wanted the point really bad. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what it was. But sometimes momentum just takes you when you want something really bad. And going on my fourth year, it's a pretty big one at this point. Q. What's been the biggest change for this team since the beginning of the season until now? HALEY ECKERMAN: I think the biggest thing is we've learned how to manage our errors and manage just how we play, and at the beginning we were up and down at points and different sets. It was a battle. And once the season progressed, we were just calm and steady throughout the whole match. And we just learned how to manage a lot better. Q. I guess, Haley, if you could talk about what Coach was saying in that fifth set. You got some really big defensive plays in the back row that gave you guys another chance. Can you just talk about how important that was at that point to have the digs that you had? Again, it was sort of spread out, but obviously that was such a big key in being able to put the match away. HALEY ECKERMAN: I think the biggest thing is just staying disciplined and just to get the ball up. As long as we could stop them and slow the ball down and just get it up in the air so we could set even a (indiscernible) ball because that was working or just to get the ball up and let us manage the ball and work with it. Q. Hannah, you were talking about yesterday your memories of the semifinal. Obviously that one was over in a blink of an eye. Can you just talk about the sense of satisfaction to make it? HANNAH ALLISON: (Laughing.) Q. Sorry. But it was. The sense of satisfaction to make it back to a final, what that means to try to play for another championship for Texas? HANNAH ALLISON: I think that's a huge obstacle that we had to overcome. Not just the way that we played that year, but that mentally beat us up. And it was hard to regroup from that because of the way that that match went down. And really what changed in this match was the realization that we can actually win when we play the best we can play. Not even the best we can play, but we just play well. And I think a lot of it is confidence, but that confidence comes from two, three years of building trust and believing that we can get back to that spot, and when we get back there we're going to prove to everybody that we deserve to be here this time. Q. For any of the players, can you talk about Lexi Erwin's performance, what the scouting report was on her and just the performance she had tonight? BAILEY WEBSTER: She's an amazing player. And we have nothing but respect for her. The scouting report showed that she was their biggest hitter. She had a lot of weapons. She hit from the back row and front row. And we knew that coming into the match. But she's a great hitter. And even though every team is going to scout you, there's great players all over the country. Sometimes they're going to score their points. They're being talked about for a reason. We have nothing but respect for her. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for Coach. Q. Can you kind of give us a sense of what adjustments‑‑ because they made some adjustments in that second set especially. Can you talk about what strategically you feel like they did differently to change the course of that match? COACH ELLIOTT: I felt like we were fishing all night except for Game 2. We had 13 errors in Game 2 with, I think it was, six hitting errors, four service errors, two reception errors, and a ball handling error. We had a lot of opportunities to win that. I thought we had eight or nine swings to convert on it. We didn't. That team just makes‑‑ but they create a lot of those problems. They cover a lot of balls and make you earn it. And so I thought Game 2 we kind of just gave away a little bit when we had a lot of opportunities. And Game 3, they were passing pretty well. Number13 was passing pretty well. So we started serving forward‑‑ or serving the opposite side, zone 5. And what that did was actually even though they weren't passing as well, it hurt us a lot because what happens when you serve the right side of the court, the tendency is the setter gets pulled forward more instead of off the net. So even though they were pulling forward, they were able to utilize their middle of the lot and keep us off balance and then create an extreme amount of pressure on us on both pins. And our middles weren't closing and their left sides decided to go off as well at the same time. So we went away from that. We went back to zone 1, got the center pulled off the net 12 or 13feet. We got them a little more predictable. We were able to get some more touches. So took a while to figure that out, but I think we did a good job from the service line to get those opportunities. Q. You said earlier about eliminating their middles in 1, 4, and 5. Exactly how did you do that? Because they were really basically nonexistent at times. COACH ELLIOTT: Yes. So volleyball 101.  We have the court. You can serve here, zone 1 or zone 5. So in Games 1, 4, and 5 we started serving this area a lot. The tendency is with those balls, percentagewise balls will be passed off more to this sideline. When you serve over here, setters can get pulled forward a lot more percentagewise. So what happened is their setter did a fantastic job of running forward and continually adding their middles involved. So when we serve here, it pulls it up and it clogs them off, and then we were able to serve them short or pin their middle sometimes in here a little bit more and get them a little bit more predictable. I felt like that was a big thing that helped our team out in terms of just eliminating some of their options because it's such a fast offense. When you get some seams, both their left‑side hitters have live arms, they can swing well, and they can score at a high percentage. Q. They seem to be getting a bit fatigued there, especially in the fifth set. Your team seems to have a little bit more bounce in their step, get a little bit higher. While their No.11, who was doing some real damage in Games 2 and 3, didn't seem to be putting as much snap on the ball. Speak to that a little bit in terms of your team's conditioning. COACH ELLIOTT: You know, we do a lot of conditioning, and we have an amazing strength coach. We have an amazing trainer. We have an amazing nutritionist and sports scientist that we work with. We do a lot of work throughout the year. Obviously we don't let our players know what's going on and I'm not really involved, but we're testing them throughout the year at points in time, finding out their conditioning levels. And we got stronger this year. And it's harder to get stronger in terms of muscle mass as the season goes on because with females they can lose muscle mass pretty fast. So understanding each player's metabolism is really important. We know that. And how they're going to be able to‑‑ what kind of consumption they need, what kind of lifting program they need. They all have different types of bodies. And we've been in fantastic shape for the last two or three years. So when we played five games, I'm not worried about our conditioning. It's won a lot of matches for us. I thought in 2010 when we overachieved and got there, we played those five‑game matches, and both times I felt like our team was a lot more fresh and we were still jumping and playing at a high level. Not only does it make you physically better, it allows you better mentally, too, because you're not as taxed and you're able to focus on the task at hand. And when it was‑‑ I forgot the second timeout that they called, what the exact time was, and it was close, I think it was 11‑9, I grabbed my setters and said: This is your game right now. Buckle down on the passing. Take care of it so we can run our offense and keep everybody involved. Stay in your posture and commit to being good. And they both did a fantastic job at the end of that game. And we were going to set Sha'Dare the last four balls if we had to. So just proud of them. Q. First, coming into that fourth set, down 2‑1, it appeared you made some lineup adjustments. Coming into that, can you talk about that and what impact that had? And then the second question is on Sha'Dare. Just talk about the game she had tonight? COACH ELLIOTT: We went from a rotation five, which is when the setter is middle front and we have two hitters two, we flipped it and we two three hitters in those rotations. We just felt like Sha'Dare and our middles, we had to get more attacking from the right side. We wanted to get some pretty good matchups. I felt like they had a good rhythm on us defensively and they were feeling pretty confident about those rotations. Eckerman was struggling a little bit. We wanted to get her on the smaller middle blocker, because Cross was just doing a great job of stuffing Eck. So we got smaller and we could start working those angles a little bit more. So we got a little different matchups that we wanted. And then in Game 5‑‑ we did it in Game 4, and then Game 5 we were battling whether to start in two or one, and we ended up starting in one, and to the point where my libero said "interesting." So but sometimes they have no idea what we're doing and sometimes we just don't tell them because it's like they have no idea about the serving and what we did and what we were trying to do. We were just trying to discuss things in terms of how we can block and scheme a little bit better. Q. What does it mean for you personally and for the program to be back in the final? COACH ELLIOTT: I spoke about it today at the coaches' banquet, what it means to coach. And when you're a coach at Texas, there's a lot of pressure and there's a lot of things that people are‑‑ eyes are on you and they want you to actually be at this level and continue. And we've done such a good job as a program and staff to get back here. For me for my players‑‑ this is not about me. It's about my players. It's about the people that put time into it. Would it be something special for me? Absolutely. But more so to see all the players and the alumni. I can't tell you how many text messages and e‑mails and Facebook posts we're getting, because everybody's following us down in Texas. It's going to be a huge task at hand. In 2009, I felt like we had a chance. We had to swing to tie it in Game 3, we had a touched call that we did not get called in Game 5 and we lose by two points. So what I've learned is that I can't control a whole lot. I can do the best I can, put my team out there put them in situations where I think they can be successful. But I've become more calm. And if we're going to win, the players are going to have to do it. We've coached them enough. We've got them to the point and they're going to have to make plays and be mentally tough like they were tonight. So I'm hoping that‑‑ I don't even know what number this is. A lot. I've been joking back with the media back at home that my monkey has grown into a gorilla on my back. But, again, I don't really feel pressure like we're doing anything wrong as a staff. I think I've got the best staff in the country. I think we know what we're doing. And some years some of the pressure that you put on yourself is based on overachieving. We've got here a couple of times where we shouldn't have probably gotten here. But those are the expectations, and I'm happy to be the one to represent this program and this university. And I know everybody back home's excited and we're going to give it our best shot and get confident and get our kids rested and focused. Q. You've had some phenomenal athletes, but the play we've referenced with Bailey where she just sort of hangs, it looked like, in the air and is able to hit over the block, can you talk about the plays she's able to make like that, especially when she's at her best? COACH ELLIOTT: Yeah, you know, early on we were really struggling with our transition setting. I felt like we were too far off the net. They were in a good deep base and they were able to touch a lot of balls and get good defense. We were continually telling Hannah let's get the ball tighter, let's get the ball tighter. And that one was too tight. And thank goodness Bailey can touch 11feet and go over the top. So she got a little adrenalin rush. I saw it in her approach speed, and I knew when she went up, if she got good hands on the ball, she was going to score. So her angles were not the same as they've been in the past, as they've been in this tournament. But the great thing about this team is Bailey ended up hitting .300 and Eckerman hits .222, but Khat Bell hits .450, McCage hits .375, Sha'Dare hits .524, and Hannah goes .400. And the one error was just a miss, and I thought it was the right opportunity in Game 5, and unfortunately we didn't convert on them. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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