Dec. 7, 2001
2002 NCAA Women's Volleyball Tournament
Friday, December 7, 2001
Stanford University
Stanford 3, Utah 1
Cardinal head coach John Dunning:
"We have a feeling in our program that one of the reasons you play is to see how well you can play. You can only see that when you play a good opponent in an important situation. That is what the playoffs are for. I have a lot of respect for Utah. Beth (Launiere) is a great coach. They played very tough when they had to. I like that our team is playing very well together. Our defense is getting better all of the time. I thought in the first two games Robyn (Lewis) had a lot of good sets, which set up the offense and gave these girls next to me the ability to get a lot of kills.
I think playing Texas A&M will make it a better match since we played each other earlier this season. They were dangerous at that time, partly because of all of their seniors. Their seniors have a lot of motivation. They were here (NCAA Tournament) two years ago when they beat Hawaii. They have been here before. The key will be to pass and serve well. We'll need to put pressure on them from the serving line and pass well because that is hard to defend. That is what happened tonight.
Sometimes as you go your strategy develops based on what you are successful with. She (Logan Tom) hits just about every shot you could come up with, and it looks like she had a couple of new ones tonight as well."
Cardinal middle blocker Tara Conrad:
"Our defense was important because it keeps us in the long rally. With our blocking strategy our defense was especially important on the high balls. I thought we did a good job at that.
In game three I think they came out with a new serving game against us and we went down on our passing."
Cardinal outside hitter Logan Tom:
"I came at it like it was any other team. They are from my hometown and I knew some of their girls, but playing at this level against that kind of competition, that can't really matter.
I've got to give credit to my teammates, especially Robyn (Lewis). I just found some holes. Sometimes when a player gets on a roll it builds their confidence, but the team also picks it up."
Cardinal outside hitter Ogonna Nnamani:
"I don't really think about how my confidence is, I just think about the team. We are playing well. I'm just really excited about this team."
Utah Quotes
Utes head coach Beth Launiere:"We didn't play our best volleyball by any stretch today. We played pretty good volleyball in game 3, and I'm proud of the team for fighting hard and coming back. Stanford threw things at us that we weren't expecting, but our team came out and fought. We played with more aggression and confidence in the third game, and we didn't do that in the first two."
"We had an incredible year, and an incredible run in the last month or so, and I'm very proud of the team. Getting here to the NCAA Tournament was a big step for our program."
"Stanford's jump servers posed problems for us. It puts significant pressure on our passers. They have size and physicalness, and that caused some trouble for us."
Senior Utes Outside Hitter Adrianne Bradley-Drake:
"It's never fun to lose, and even though we lost tonight, we've had an awesome season. We set a lot of goals and accomplished some amazing things. This was a great last season."
Senior Utes Middle Blocker McKelle Stilson:
"I took it all in and tried my hardest. I didn't want to go down like that. We had to be smarter, play harder. In the third game, we started to get excited. We started communicating better."