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The University of Mississippi Athletics
MEET THE PRESS: Steven McRoberts Press Conference
9/1/2014 | Volleyball
Ole Miss head coach Steven McRoberts met with members of the media Monday to discuss last weekend's Buffalo Classic win and the upcoming Memphis Invitational this weekend.
Opening Statement...
We went to Buffalo this past weekend and had a really good tournament. We went 4-0. It was the first time since 2007 to win first four matches in the program's history and it was the first time to win a tournament away from home since 2007. It was the first time to have four sweeps to start the season since 1984. Nakeyta Clair, one of our middle blockers, was named to the All-Tournament Team. She was the MVP of the tournament and had a great tournament for us. Melanie Crow and Aubrey Edie were both named all-tournament.
We had a lot of players that played well at different times over the weekend. The ball was distributed well from a team standpoint. We were definitely the most balanced there. We had moments where our passing was as good as it's ever been since I've been here. With the multiple attackers that we have, it created a lot of problems for our opponents. One thing -- if you were to look at a lot of the box scores from last year -- is the team lost a lot of sets in the 20s and had a lot of four and five set losses. One of the things that we've tried to do as a coaching staff coming in is to create confidence within the team as we get into pressure situations, and we handled a lot of pressure situations this weekend very well. We were down 23-19 against Lehigh. Sometimes being a pessimist on the sidelines the way things were going, it didn't look very good for us. We had a server go back and go on a six-point run for us to end the game 25-23. I had a friend text that's familiar with the program and said, "The team would have lost that set last year." It's good to see that mentality change.
We came out and played the host team yesterday. We were down 11-4 to start the first set. Buffalo is a very athletic team. They got off to that great start, and we just kept chipping away. We fought off two or three set points and then won 28-26. We just really flipped the momentum of the match. These young ladies are really gaining confidence in themselves and in the system that we're trying to get going. It's a lot of fun to see.
This weekend we head to Memphis. We play Memphis on Friday night. Memphis took Alabama to five sets this past weekend. Alabama and us are the two teams in the conference that started off the season 4-0. We're both at the top of the conference. If you were to look at conference stats, we're in the middle to upper tier in just about every statistical category, which is a nice way to start the season. We feel like the competition this weekend will be a notch up from what we just played. The teams that we've played will be in the 20-win area once they get to their conference. The win over Buffalo and the win over Lehigh will be good RPI wins for our program.
On mentality change...
It's still early. We have the day off today. I said last night as we were getting off the bus, "One thing to think about before we come to practice on Tuesday is let's be happy with our performance over the weekend, but I sure hope when we're unloading the bus in November we're not saying `Hey, that was a great Buffalo tournament that first weekend.'" I hope that this is just the beginning of their confidence and mentality as we're moving forward. One of the things that we've really made a commitment to as a staff - we've tried to really put this one on the team - is just being process oriented and not even worrying about end results. Hopefully if we have the right things in place, the wins will happen. As a first year program, that's a big concern for us. We have a recruiting class next year of six young ladies coming in, and we want the returners to be able to tell them this is how we do things. This is what we're about. I saw that this weekend. Nobody pushed the panic button when we got down. Everybody stayed steady and played with the game plan and fought. It just paid off. Some weekends it will pay off like it did now. Some weekends when we're playing a higher-level competition, we won't be able to give an 11-4 cushion and come back and win.
