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NCAA WOMEN'S NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPDecember 13, 2012Alaina BergsmaLiz BrennerKatherine FischerJim MooreLOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY Oregon – 3 THE MODERATOR: We'll begin with an opening statement from Coach Moore. COACH MOORE: First of all, Penn State's awesome. I look at it, probably not supposed to say this, but I have no idea how we won that match, because they were really good. And as I said the other day, Russ is the best. And so a lot of congratulations to them and they are a phenomenal team. But I really like these guys sitting to my right. They're special. And I think tonight they proved how tough they were. We certainly didn't play at the level we wanted to offensively. A lot of that had to do with Penn State, obviously. But, boy, they're tough. And I can't say enough about them. I'm done. THE MODERATOR: Questions? Q. Coach, would you please talk about pulling Katherine Fischer in the first set, why you did that, and how she responded the rest of the match? COACH MOORE: She responded by having 16 kills. But I did it‑‑ she struggled. Sometimes you can read them. She's going to hit me after this. But that woman's brilliant. I mean, obviously she's a two‑time First‑Team Academic All‑American. And for the first time in her career we had come up with a game plan. We were talking about who was going to go where, and for the first time in Kat's career she asked: I'm going here on defense, right? And it was wrong. And everybody else in the room went, Kat, excuse me, what are you saying? She's never made that. And we went, uh‑oh, we've got to watch Kat. Marteene's certainly capable, came in, did a great job, had a kill right away, but it gave her a chance to get a breather, and then obviously she responded the way that Katherine Fischer is capable of. Q. Alaina, could you talk about how important that second set was to battle back and be able to tie the match and then go into the locker room with it tied? It was a pretty epic struggle there to win it, to win the second set. ALAINA BERGSMA: We got up by a lot, relaxed a little bit. Definitely let them come back into the game. I think that was really clutch for us, to go in knowing it's tied, knowing that, I mean, set 3's basically starting over, game to two. And I think we did a really good job of fighting. Our team, like Jim said, is pretty tough. We will fight until the end. Q. Liz, this season just continues. You guys in your first Final Four, now your first national championship match. I know there's not a lot of time so far for it to set in, but put in perspective what it means to be playing for a national championship against Texas on Saturday. LIZ BRENNER: It's extremely exciting. And every one of us is happy‑‑ not happy‑‑ well, obviously, yeah, but we can't wait until Saturday night. And the longer we keep playing, the more fun we have. And we're going to come out Saturday and play really hard and we're going to have a lot of fun doing it. Q. Katherine, it did seem that after a while, as a team, started serving maybe the way you had hoped you would, but especially in that fourth set, within the first nine points I think you guys had four aces. What were you seeing as a team in Penn State's service seed that allowed you to get that many aces? I think it was even five by the end of the set. KATHERINE FISCHER: I think it was just more of us getting comfortable. One of our main weapons is our serving, taking other teams out of system. So we got after it. We felt more comfortable in the fourth set. We knew we could play with them. We got after it knowing we could stress them with our serves. Q. Alaina, can you kind of talk about the importance of the defense tonight and just knowing that you were going against some heavy hitters against Penn State? ALAINA BERGSMA: Penn State is definitely very talented hitters. And we tried‑‑ we adjust our defenses. So we adjust to them. We all know our block isn't great. So just being able to dig balls. And Haley Jacob did an awesome job leading us on defense and coming up with some clutch digs. COACH MOORE: We had ten blocks today. ALAINA BERGSMA: We did? We struggled all year. Q. Alaina, they do have a great block. That's one of the things they're known for along with a lot of other things. But you guys were able to, especially you, hit well from the back row, attack well from the back row. Could you just talk about how you were able to‑‑ I don't want to say their block was so good, but you guys were still able to do well enough against it to win this match. ALAINA BERGSMA: Part of that is our passing was there tonight. We passed really well. And we have a fast offense. And that's really hard for even the biggest blockers to catch up to. So going to the pins quick definitely helps, and having so many weapons. I mean, three people sitting here, we're all pretty much right in there with kills. And I think that really stresses blockers. Never knowing really who is going to be, I mean, killing it that night. Q.  We saw after a while, Liz, that they were maybe trying too hard. They were hitting the ball into the net a lot. They weren't coming out with real smooth approaches. How much of that is something that you guys did differently; that they weren't just doing some big power game where they just come right after you guys? LIZ BRENNER: I think as the game went on we became more comfortable and we're in our game and we're definitely in our flow, and that definitely like threw them off and they weren't used to having another team do that, I feel like, which kind of rattled them a little bit. And we just took advantage of it and kept pressing, and kept going with it. Q. Alaina, what was your mindset going into that fourth set? It seemed like you really took over with six kills in that last one. ALAINA BERGSMA: I think I was just more excited than anything. Obviously I was excited when we started. But it makes my life so much easier when so many other people are putting the ball on the ground, and I felt like it really opened me up. I mean, with Liz and Kat hitting so well, and I kind of struggled in the first couple sets, they started leaving me more open, it just made it easier. Q. Kat, I asked Coach this, but I meant to ask you as a follow‑up now.  You had to have felt frustrated or down or something in that first set. What was going on in the first set? How did you get out of that? KATHERINE FISCHER: I was really nervous. I know they're really physical. And sometimes it kind of gets in my mind they're really big and I'm not. So I just was putting pressure on myself that I shouldn't have been doing. So hopefully I'll learn from it in the national championship. Q. For any of the players, when you saw the injury to Hancock, what was the message on the bench? What was your mindset at that point, to attack that, or how did you play that? ALAINA BERGSMA: So we talked about attacking that, but what you guys don't know against Washington their key outside, Krista Vansant, who's an All‑American, went out, and that just made Washington fight so much harder and they played lights out after that happened. So that's kind of what we talked about, was: You know what's going to happen; they're going to get fired up, feed off of that. Obviously it's hard when a key player goes out like that. And we just said one point at a time. Obviously in some ways you think it's going to be good, but it's really not when someone goes out. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for Coach. Q. Coach, looking at this match in Games 2 and 3, your team had a big lead and Penn State was able to come back and take the lead, but you guys were able to recover in time to win those two games. Could you talk a little bit of the mindset of your game to be able to recover in time to still pull out the victories in those? COACH MOORE: I think they're tough kids. I think they're mentally tough. And they are willing to do what it takes. So they'll work as hard as they possibly can at any given moment. And that's cliche, I understand that. But, I mean, they're not quitting. I mean, they just absolutely are not going to quit. So I just‑‑ that's their personality. And it's kind of special. Q. Jim, you can put this in perspective historically as well as anybody because you spent time at Texas. You know it's been a while for them, and you guys have never won one before, so it's a big moment for both programs on Saturday. Can you just talk about that, you guys both playing for a championship? COACH MOORE: No such thing. I hate to be‑‑ can I say Chip Kelly? I hate to say this, but this is the reality. We can't think about that. I mean, we don't‑‑ you don't have the luxury. If you want to do that, if you want to have the opportunity to be successful Saturday night, it's the first play against Texas. And I really mean that. I'm pretty happy right now obviously. But there's more work to do. And I wasn't just happy to get here. You know, it is difficult to live with your assistant coach. And as we walked out of the room tonight to come here, I said: I don't want to go home. And so somebody had to hear that. And so it's the first point against Texas. Q. You watched a big part of that Texas‑Michigan match. What did you like about what Michigan was doing to push‑‑ they're unseeded, sixth place in the Big Ten. What did you like about the way Michigan played in terms of Texas? COACH MOORE: They're scary because we've got to play them next year. I didn't like a lot of things that they did. I mean, they just played hard. Obviously they're playing very, very well right now. And, I mean, they dug a lot of balls and they played aggressive. And they were just‑‑ they just played. And so they played and they played hard. And that's what we have to do, and I guess that goes back to my point: We have to go out there, play hard, get after it, one at a time, because you can't worry about, oh, gosh, where are we playing? What's going on? It doesn't matter. It's another volleyball match. That's what I told them going into this. You're just playing volleyball. And that's how we have to look at it Saturday night. Q. When during your season did you think realistically you could be in that situation? When was the first time? COACH MOORE: Last January. I mean it. I knew we were good. We were good last year; we just weren't consistent. To beat Penn State at Penn State to open the season, and that was a big deal, and then to beat UCLA at home right towards the end and they end up winning the national championship and we beat Stanford and Cal at Stanford and Cal for the first time in program's history, all of that last year. We just‑‑ but then we turned around and lost to Oregon State and Utah. We weren't consistent, but we were good. And that was our emphasis, when we came back in January, it's about being consistently good, not just going out there and hoping for things to happen. And they worked extremely hard to make that happen. Everybody's asked, well, how come it happened? And the old adage is experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. They weren't very happy a year ago at this point in time. And they made a change. And that's why we're here. Q. You talked about the Penn State block. I think they had 15 of those 20 in the first two sets. Seemed like they really had the attack pegged. What changed from that point? COACH MOORE: Lauren did a better job for sure. I think we kind of knew going in that they were going to‑‑ they're going to go with the hitter. It was most likely to get the ball. And we kind of knew that. And Lauren just had a hard time adjusting to that. And there's a couple times early that Ari got blocked and they viewed Ari as a threat. And she is. And she still was setting where there was two instead of trusting Katherine or trusting Marteene. And when we put Marteene in there, that's when we could really see it, that I'm going to go with Ari because Ari's always been there. And you can't‑‑ you gotta trust whatever's happening in that system. And as we got into Games 3 and 4, she did a lot better job of trusting what was happening, saying this is what they're doing, I gotta do the opposite. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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