Steven McRoberts Weekly Press Conference

Oct. 31, 2016

Ole Miss volleyball head coach Steven McRoberts met with members of the media on Monday as part of his weekly press conference. Coach McRoberts discussed the Rebels' recent match and Florida and looked ahead to the weekend road trip to LSU and Auburn.

Opening Statementâ€¦
"First of all I'd like to congratulate our cross country teams on an outstanding weekend and also wish Coach (Matt) Mott and the soccer team the best of luck today as they start their conference tournament. We had one match last weekend against Florida. I think sadly the story of the year is we had a chance again. Against the No. 9 team in the nation, a team that will most likely be in another Elite Eight, potentially a Final Four, we were in every set."

On Kate Gibson and Lexi Thompsonâ€¦
"One thing over the last two matches with our win over Alabama and the close match versus Florida is the play of Kate Gibson and Lexi Thompson our two outside hitters. I've always thought this season that if both of them could get going at the same time, we would have a chance against anyone. They've shown that the last two matches. Hopefully that's something that we can keep going. We are looking this up, but Kate's 20 kills in three sets against Florida probably is among the top five performances since the 25 point era for our volleyball program. Just outstanding. Before the match even started, Heather (Shirley), our athletic trainer, walked up to me and said she wasn't sure how long Kate could go because her arm was killing her. She threw some tape on her arm."

On LSU and Auburnâ€¦
"We'll continue on the road this week starting at LSU. We lost a heartbreaker to LSU at home three weeks ago. Hopefully we can get some revenge on that one. Then we turn around and play at Auburn on Sunday. Both of those we lost in five sets at home. If we play like we played this past Friday against Florida and with eight matches to go, I like our chances in most, if not all of them. "

On the difference between the close losses and winningâ€¦
"I wish I had the answer to that. I feel like the tough thing is we've played really well. Probably our best matches against the top half of the league,l those teams are 10-1, 10-1, 10-1 and 9-2. We've been in every single one of those. In fact, I felt like we could've won every single one of those. And then the bottom half, we've lost a couple of times in five. I don't feel like we even showed up against Tennessee for some reason. If you go back and break down film on a lot of these matches and it's just a detail thing, just small things. Even going back to Florida where at one point we had a five or six point lead. At 25-25 a ball is coming over the net and our middle blocker just isn't aggressive going after the ball. They push it over, get the momentum, win the next point and it's over. Those are usually points that you expect to win. For some reason we're just not winning those. It's been a frustrating season. The team's frustrated. The coaches are frustrated, but I think it shows a lot of character that every time they come out, we're giving ourselves chances. Again, we kind of turned the corner against Alabama because we finally finished a match against a good team, and then followed that up with a great performance against Florida. The schedule this year maybe hasn't been kind to us on getting momentum. Because if we would've played like that and beat Alabama then turn around and played somebody in the middle or bottom half, all of a sudden we win two in a row and get some momentum going. Those top half teams are tough to get. That's our goal. "

RebelsCalendar

Players Mentioned

Kate Gibson

Lexi Thompson

Lexi Thompson

The University of Mississippi Athletics