Steven McRoberts Weekly Press Conference

Sept. 12, 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 tournament play and previewed the upcoming Scenic City Showdown in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Opening Statement...
"We didn't get to talk about our home tournament last weekend; we were able to win it also, 3-0. Going into this last week we had what I thought would be, and will be, our toughest matches, from an opponent standpoint. We played four teams that typically are in the top 60 RPI, a couple of those hanging around top 30 a lot of times. Starting with Arkansas State at home we felt like we played our best match of the year and won in four."

On balance of team...
"Going back to our first two tournaments, we won both of our first two tournaments and had six different people make the all-tournament teams. Where we're at this year is we don't have that one player that you can point to and just say 'that's a dominant kid', but we have a strong core of players that on any given night can step up. That's the difference this year from the last two is that we can have this balance and have a lot of players that are scoring points for us."

On Lipscomb Invite...
"We went to Lipscomb feeling good about ourselves and then have arguably, against Lipscomb, our worst match of the year. We got swept against a very good Lipscomb team that went on to win the tournament. We had about a two-hour break and got back out there again and won the first two sets against Virginia Tech pretty handily. After the 10-minute break between sets two and three we came out flat. We lost set three and set four, but got out of the fifth with a 15-10 win. I was really proud of the way we played that day, just to finish 1-1. Going into to the week in general I thought if we could go 2-2 that week from an RPI standpoint that would be good for us. The next day we played Northwestern, who had Lipscomb on the ropes the day before. They are a big team, a team that competes in the Big 10, which is the best volleyball conference as of last year. They defeated Penn State, which if you know anything about NCAA volleyball Penn State is consistently over the past 10 years been the best program. We went down 0-2 and I was thinking 'well we just kind of let that one slip away'. The last two years I would have argued that we would have come out and gotten swept, but this team is just different and our culture is different. I love the competitiveness of this team; we came out and won the third set 25-9 and it was our best set of the whole year. We hit .700 with just one hitting error. The fourth set was a competitive set, which we won (25-22), and then we won 15-7 in the fifth. We came out of the week 3-1. From an RPI standpoint that's a huge boost for us."

On upcoming matches...
"We go to Chattanooga this week to play Tennessee State, Appalachian State and Chattanooga. Appalachian State was a top 100 RPI team last year. They are struggling a little this year. Chattanooga at their place will be tough, they were a top 100 RPI team last year and they are picked to win their conference this year. We are hoping that we can continue to have a good week of practice and come out and win all three to go into conference play 12-1. We have put ourselves in a pretty good RPI position for making that NCAA tournament come December."

For more information on Ole Miss Volleyball, follow the Rebels on Twitter, @OleMissVB, on Facebook at OleMissVolleyball and on Instagram at OleMissVB. Also follow Coach McRoberts on Twitter, @CoachMcRoberts.

The University of Mississippi Athletics

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