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NCAA WOMEN'S NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPDecember 19, 2013Hannah AllisonHaley EckermanJerritt ElliottSEATTLE, WASHINGTON Wisconsin – 3 THE MODERATOR: Joining us now is Texas coach Jerritt Elliott, Haley Eckerman and Hannah Allison. Coach, an opening statement. COACH ELLIOTT: Tough way to end the season. We put a lot into the season. We had some great leadership in what the senior class has done for our program. And our university is, it's amazing, with the national championship, three out of four Final Fours. And tonight felt like it was the first match of the season. We just never got comfortable. When you make 43 hitting errors and have 46 kills, it's tough to win any match. And we just didn't do the things necessary. For whatever reason, we got on our heels right off the bat and really couldn't find a groove the entire night. And tonight I'm proud, though, we came out of the locker room trying to figure it out and trying to fight. But Wisconsin did a nice job defensively against us. But it just wasn't‑‑ probably one of our poorest performances in terms of kill percentage and error percentage, serve/receive and serving. And when that happens, this game is tough to win. And that was my concern going in. I felt like we could win the match if we just contained and managed our game well. Overall we did not do that. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student‑athletes. Q. They seemed really off balance with their serving. Were they doing something you all didn't expect tonight? HALEY ECKERMAN: I think the biggest thing is we weren't used to this arena. So that started right away with the serving. And so we just tried to balance as the game went through and just try get it high enough that we could run an out‑of‑system ball and manage our game better. That was something as passers we were trying to talk through and try to fight it off. HANNAH ALLISON: I'm not a passer, so I wasn't receiving the serves directly. But we're used to teams trying to serve extremely tough against us because we're a very strong offensive team and that's one of the only ways that you can get us out of system, throw our offense off a little bit. So I give credit to Wisconsin. They served very tough. And they did mix it up. And I'm sure that was part of their game plan but they did execute that well. Q. Hannah, you were subbed out there in the second game. Just seemed like you were a little out of sync. Did it feel, as Coach said, you guys started this match out of sync and were never able to get it back? HANNAH ALLISON: I think so, especially with a game like volleyball, rhythm has a lot to do with it. As a setter, the offense has a rhythm to it. And when the team serves tough, sometimes you have to weather that storm. It's just not going to be in rhythm to start all the way through the match. So just weathering the storm. And having Chloe as another setter, another strong setter. We have confidence in her. We always have. Sometimes it just gives a different look, changes it up, just anything to get that ball rolling as far as the rhythm. And she did a good job tonight. Q. Haley, I know you guys go against a lot of great defensive teams, but really seemed like (indiscernible), but it really seemed like they dug the ball well. They just kept the points going. Was that maybe a big factor, that they kept points going, that against a lot of teams maybe you would have been finished with a point? HALEY ECKERMAN: I think they did a good job at that, challenging us to hit other spots and move the ball around. And even when we did make a change they were making that change, too, and that's what great teams do. And they did a great job adjusting right away to Bailey and I and all the other middles. And Chia also. And so I think that flustered us a little bit because the balls that are normally getting scores weren't. And so I think that kind of threw us off a little bit also. Q. Haley, from a defensive end, it's got to be so much different to play against two such short hitters who are so powerful and effective, but it can't be like anything else you've seen or practiced against very much? HALEY ECKERMAN: Yes and no. We have people who hit like Bailey. And we're so used to trying to block someone so much taller. We're used to reaching and things like that. That kind of was a challenge for us. So a lot of practice the last couple of days we've been working on trying to stay low and over and being ready for those smaller hitters that were going to try to tool us. Q. It seemed after a while there was a lot of tipping. Did you want to do that? Did you feel like you do that that was a mistake now in retrospect? HALEY ECKERMAN: I don't think it was a mistake, I think we were just trying to be smart with the ball and not make any more errors than we had already made. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach. Q. Do you agree with her answer there, that there was not too much tipping? It felt like there was a tremendous amount of tipping in the second and the fourth set. COACH ELLIOTT: Yeah, some of that had to do with just location. Some of it had to do just with us being so out of sorts. We were talking on the bench not to tip short. And it was confusing. But if you look at these box scores, if you would have told me Wisconsin hits .131 and we have 19 stuff blocks, I'm saying we're winning that 99percent of the time. Just because we didn't manage our game. When you have 43 errors or 11 errors, you're doing almost 50percent of the work for that team.  And they caused some of the problems with the way they played defense, but we weren't passing the ball well enough. When they're so strong in the back court, we had a hard time returning with our left sides. It was a serve and pass game. If we're good serve and pass, we can do a lot of things. This is one of our poorest performances on the year. Wisconsin served extremely tough and got us out of system. And we haven't had set and receiving errors in those numbers at all. Q. You guys aren't known as a great passing team. Lately do you feel like usually you get through that because you have such big hammers, and was that too much of a breakdown tonight? COACH ELLIOTT: It just started with the serve and pass game. I think we had five service errors in Game 1 and four reception errors. That's not enough points in a game to 25. And we've been a pretty solid service team. We're not great serving, but we've been good out of system. And our lefts struggled tonight with that. But we just never got comfortable out there. And to me it looked like it was the first match of the season for both sides. I mean, in Game 3, we won, they had 16 hitting errors. It's pretty sloppy on both sides. And the only skill that I thought we performed well was blocking. Q. With such an experienced team and having won the championship, why do you think that's what happened, that you would look this way in this type of match? COACH ELLIOTT: I think that's the best question tonight. That's what I'm wracking my brain about it. What didn't we do? We prepared the same way we did for Wisconsin. I think we got them motivated earlier today. We haven't done well all season long when we were expected to win. We make the American and those games, we just couldn't get comfortable. At one point during that match in Game 4, I was thinking if we can get through this match I know we're going to be great the next night. But we didn't find a way. Wisconsin did. And they played great. Q. Did you feel like you never hit that fifth gear? Seemed like in the fourth game there were people watching, were looking at it thinking they're probably going to take this to 5 and Texas is going to pull it out here. Sort of felt like that, but you just never quite got that string of points to put it away. COACH ELLIOTT: I don't think we got to second gear. Yeah, I mean, it was one of those matches we just had to keep extending the match and hoping that we can get there and put some more pressure on Wisconsin. Because obviously we have a little more experience. And the tighter the game gets, hopefully we're going to give ourselves some opportunities, especially if we could have come back to Game 5. We were cheerleading more than we've ever cheerleaded from the bench all season long. Just trying to get them going. Thought we got them back in the right frame of mind in the locker room in terms of letting them just go the last two games. And sometimes it's tough. Sometimes it's tough on the bench. You just don't have a lot of answers and don't have a lot of things you can do. We tried some different things. We made some adjustments; but, again, they hit .131. So it had to do with all production on our side and we didn't feel good about that because they frustrated us a little bit with our defense. Q. The line hit early was working against you guys. Seemed like you guys adjusted fairly well to that. Maybe midway through the second game and then they came back to it a little at the end and had more success. Did it surprise you a little bit going to the line quite a bit? COACH ELLIOTT: The blocking scheme‑‑ our scouting report was a block line team and to take that away. Morales did a nice job hitting high hands on us. It's a challenge‑‑ she's a very talented lady. She struggles putting the ball to the floor. She's good because she knows how to hit high hands, used to the block, blocks well and does that. And we got tooled a bunch. She was coming back to the line. And our blocking was really good tonight. We almost had five stuff blocks per game. If you're blocking three, you're probably leading the country, 3.1, leading the country. So our blocking has been really good. But just dig to transition, and our first ball contact, and we got ‑‑ the rhythm with our hitters wasn't great all night. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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