The University of Mississippi Athletics
Steven McRoberts Weekly Press Conference
10/26/2015 | Volleyball
Ole Miss head coach Steven McRoberts met with members of the media Monday to discuss the team's home weekend and the upcoming road trip to Georgia.
Opening Statement
"I'm really proud of Coach Mott and that program. I know I'll be there Thursday night and I hope that we can get a huge crowd so that they can finish this thing out and have a chance to win that championship and get our fall off to a great start with our athletic programs."
On Tennessee Win
"For us, Friday night was big. We got a 3-1 win over Tennessee. We had a lot of players contribute. Tennessee is 19-6. That's a team that last year was winless in the conference and beat us. Our team was excited to get back on the court with them and get a win. Tennessee is a top-100 RPI team so that helps us."
On Kentucky Match
"We had to turn around on Sunday and play Kentucky who only has one loss in the conference. Overall I was pleased with the effort. We're still a work in progress and a team that has a lot of work to do. We're still trying to put some things together and get confidence. When you get in the SEC and you're playing these teams that have all these great players it's tough to do. We showed it at times. I felt like it was almost a replay of the Florida match. First set was 15-15 then they close it out on a 10-5 run. We didn't do a very good job in the second set. We played flat almost the whole set, they controlled it. Between sets two and three the coaching staff really challenged the team to come out and compete and to go out aggressive. It was a back and forth battle. We had the advantage there at the end; we were up 23-21. The crowd was into it and then Kentucky ended on a four point run to win the match. If we had moved onto that fourth set you never know what would have happened. If we play the way we did in that third set we're going to win most of our matches in the league so that was fun to watch."
On Other Players Stepping up
"Kate Gibson had another good match Friday night after a great match at Arkansas. Kathryn Cather had a good match on Friday. She had a good pre-conference then at times in conference was non-existent from an offensive standpoint. She had 10 kills and only one error, so that was huge. Ty Laporte, who has been playing well, for the first time in a year and a half had her hitting percentage pass Nakeyta's in the middle, which is saying a lot. Nakeyta is an All-SEC type player. She didn't have the best weekend. One thing I looked at Friday and Saturday was Nakeyta had the worst stat line from a hitting standpoint out of any of our hitters. I showed it to my assistant coaches and said that if I showed you just this, if I showed you what Nakeyta hit, especially where we were as a team about three weeks ago, what would you have said? And they all were like we would have got swept, and we won. We've got other players stepping up."
On this Week
"We're at the halfway point in conference. We have a quick bounce back match on Wednesday. We head to Georgia tomorrow to play them Wednesday night on ESPNU. Then we hit the road this weekend to go to South Carolina who just beat Arkansas at home, so it's going to be a tough match to win even though they're behind us in the standings. These will be two big road matches for us; we're going to need to go something like 7-2 or 6-3 I think to have a chance to be talked about for the NCAA Tournament here at the end."
