Aug. 31, 2008
Head Coach John Dunning
Opening Statement
"I'm really proud of our team for how we reacted after how we played on Friday night. We really kind of stayed together and gathered ourselves and played at a completely different level tonight. That is a really good thing for our season."
General thoughts on the match
"I think the key is how together they stayed and how hard they fought. They didn't let things bother them. We obviously played well the first two games, maybe surprised Texas and then they took the game away from us. We could have gone south, especially when they went ahead in game five, but I thought we were very composed and did a great job. A lot of that is due to our seniors; they held it together really well. Cynthia (Barboza) and Alix (Klineman) took a lot of really good swings on the outside so our setters must have set some really good balls."
On lineup changes
"We pretty much left it alone for game three. We tried to make an adjustment at game four, but it didn't work so well. I flipped the lineup around a little bit and we got someone new in the lineup. She did fine, but it just was different. They started well and they were on us. Then in game five, I think we just kind of kept our composure. We decided to go outside with Cynthia a lot in the end; we had a good match-up for her and she took a lot of great swings."
Senior outside hitter Cynthia Barboza
General thoughts
"The main difference between today and when we played Nebraska was our intensity level. We were fighting for points; we weren't just waiting for things to happen to us. I think we really came out wanting to feel different from the way we felt on Friday night, and I think we succeeded in that. Win or lose that match, we played so much better than we did the night before."
On the combating their play after the first two sets
"We did a really good job of jumping on them in the first two games, but at no point in the match did we think they were ever just going to fold over. We knew they were going to come back after the second game with more intensity and more firepower, and they absolutely did. They played great all the way through to the fifth game. I'm just glad we ended up on top."
On what the team learned
"I think we learned how we want to be on the court, what the intensity level has to be for us to play our best. I think we did a really good job of staying together as a team and playing together."