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The University of Mississippi Athletics
Steven McRoberts Weekly Press Conference
9/7/2015 | Volleyball
Ole Miss head coach Steven McRoberts met with members of the media Monday to discuss the team's 7-1 start and look ahead to this weekend's Rebel Classic.
Opening Statement...
"It's kind of weird to get up here and talk about being 7-1 thinking we've had a roller coaster season already. About a week or so into our preseason Melanie Crow suffered a concussion in practice and was out nine days so she did not play in our first four matches. She came in during our fifth match against UT-Martin, who last year had a terrible RPI and it looks like their headed that direction again this year. We didn't play very well our first five matches, and came out 4-1 but that loss to UT-Martin can come back to bite us at the end of the season. We can definitely help ourselves right the ship, and we felt like we did that this weekend at North Carolina State."
On the team as a whole...
We are still a pretty young team. We have just two seniors on the floor, and three or four new players in the mix that have been playing a lot. We feel as a coaching staff we are more talented but we are throwing in a lot of new players and match one counts for us, we don't have scrimmages outside of some intra squad. A lot of times you just don't know after two or three weeks of practices if what you're doing is going to work until you get someone else on the other side of the net.
On this past weekend...
At this point we are healthy. NC State went into the match Friday night undefeated, and they beat South Carolina at South Carolina in front of about 1,800 fans so we knew it was going to be a tough match. We came out playing very well in the first set, and NC State came back and won the next two. They had three or four match points in the fourth set and actually because of a few questionable calls it could have been over, but the team stayed resilient going on a seven point run to win the fourth set. They started the fifth set on a six or seven point run, which is nice when you're going to 15, and finished them off. They came back the next day after getting done late to play Delaware. Delaware had beaten Central Florida the weekend before who was a NCAA Tournament team and top 40 RPI team last year, and we won in three straight. We came back to play Jacksonville who went five with Auburn before coming to this tournament and we beat them also 3-0. I felt like our play was a lot better, but we need to cut down on our errors. Aubrey Edie is off to a really good start for us from a setting standpoint, and her hitting percentage is well ahead of where it was at this point last year. Nakeyta Clair is leading the conference in kill percentage; she's our preseason All-SEC player. I also think Melanie Crow can be that type player too. She played Tuesday night and over the weekend averaging four kills a set, which is huge. Again, we have a lot of players contributing. During the North Carolina State match I think we had 11 or 12 players that came into the match at different times, so we have a lot more depth this year.
On this upcoming weekend...
This weekend coming up we play Thursday night against Belmont. They're coming off a win over UTEP up in Memphis so they're going to come in confident. We have Buffalo Friday morning at 11, that's our kids game and if you want to see our craziest volleyball match of the season you'll come to that one. I would suggest getting there early, because there won't be a seat available due to the 800 screaming elementary kids in there. Later that afternoon, 30 minutes before soccer kicks off with Kentucky, we host Southern Miss who is coming off a weekend where they beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa and beat Tulsa, which you guys know I'm familiar with that program, so they're coming in 8-0. Again, all three of those will help us but that Southern Miss match is big for us as we're looking for a NCAA tournament bid later on."
On Ty Laporte...
"She's doing great. She made the all-tournament team this past weekend. She had a good bounce back, because during North Carolina State she started off really well then flat lined a little bit so we put Taylor Alexander in for her to finish out the match. Taylor played steady and played low error doing exactly what we needed. Ty came back the next day hit over .400 during both matches and came up with some big blocks at the end of those matches as teams were trying to push us to the fourth set. She's been a good leader. She and Nakeyta (Clair) are the two seniors so this is the way we want to see both of them go out."
On Southern Miss playing his old team (Tulsa) and the Rebels playing Southern this week...
"We are very familiar with the players who are at Tulsa so we know that Southern Miss is a good program. That's the film we'll look at this week for sure to game plan better. Southern Miss has kind of been in a rebuilding mode the last couple of years, so for them to go to Alabama and beat them says a lot about their program. We were the only team to go to Alabama last season and beat them so we're going to have to be ready to play."
