May 23, 2006
Quotes:
Pepperdine head coach Adam Steinberg
Opening statement: "Wow!!! This is a dream come true. To win Pepperdine's first national championship (men's tennis) ever, with all the great players and the great tradition and the great teams that coach (Allen) Fox had in the 1980's ... and to come here to the finals and win it for a small school like ours, it means the world to me and the guys. To beat a team like Georgia which had been undefeated all year, and the depth of college tennis today, this is incredible. We knew that everything was against us. Everone thought Georgia was going to win, but sitting up here now is ... words can't express how I feel now. I love my team. When I looked at my first roster (4 years ago), I said it's going to take awhile to build this. We pointed to our fourth year. It came about. I'm so happy that our four seniors are leaving with a national championship. They deserve it because they are incredible people both on and off the court. I owe them everything."
On beating Georgia after losing to them earlier this year indoors: "Indoors is a different game. I think when we got down indoors and that they are such a good serving team and they are a big team, it was tough to come back. Outdoors, I felt we had a little better shot. The second part is that we are a lot better team now. We are deeper and stronger. When you win as many matches as we did during the season, you grow up and believe. We believed during the tournament that we were going to be champs. That's all we talked about since day one. After we lost to Texas (in Austin), that was another incentive for us (beat Texas in the semfinals). That was a motivating factor going in. Tonight, we talked about winning the national championship and beating Georgia. We wanted to avenge both losses (Texas and Georgia earlier this year) and we wanted to go out by saying we beat the best. Our doubles play has been great all week, and it carried us today."
Georgia head coach Manuel Diaz
Opening statement: "Pepperdine had a great tournament. They are deserving champions. Our guys fought their hearts out. We didn't lose because we played a poor match. All the credit goes to Pepperdine. We kept fighting. In many ways I felt we overachieved in this tournament with the injury to Strahinja Bobusic (torn tendons in his wrist). To take nothing away from Ricardo Gonzales who really won a crucial match in doubles against Virginia ... that gave us momentum and then we went on to win that match. When Bobusic went down, I thought we would have had a hard time winning another match. For our guys to fight and overcome and beat a very, very good team in Virginia, and a great Baylor team last night, and come down to the wire against Pepperdine, our guys did a tremendous job. For some reason, we didn't play very well in doubles today. A good part of that reason is the fact that Pepperdine is so big and aggressive. They move so well and are so well coached. Pepperdine was just a bit more quicker and more powerful than we were. We had a great season. We won the national indoors, won the SEC title, and made it to the finals. That's what I told my team. I'm proud of them. They showed up everyday. They did everything I asked them to do. I have no regrets and I don't think my players will have any regrets."