Steven McRoberts Weekly Press Conference

Oct. 9, 2017

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 matches against Arkansas and Missouri and talked about preparing for No. 1 Florida.

Opening Statementâ€¦
"It was a tough weekend for us. I thought we played well enough to win at Arkansas on Friday. I know all of you who write on all the different sports in the league understand how important it is when you have those opportunities on the road you take advantage of it. We were up 23-21 in the third set after splitting the first two. They have a very good outside hitter, probably the best outside hitter in the league who just took over the end of that set with four straight kills to win it 25-23. We bounced back in the fourth set to win 25-23. I felt like we had a lot of momentum going into the fifth set. Two years ago, we beat them in five there, and it felt eerily similar. We just didn't pull it out at the end. Down 13-12 they ended on a couple of plays we just did not handle very well. That was disappointing.

We had a lot of players have good matches. Nayo Warnell coming off SEC defensive player of the week honors had a career high in kills with 12. Offensively, I thought we did a good job. Both of our teams are pretty similar and I was just disappointed that we didn't take advantage of that.

On Missouri matchâ€¦
After the Arkansas match, we traveled to Columbia Missouri. It was a tough matchup against a very physical Missouri team. I thought we had a good practice on Saturday, and the girls were mentally into it. It just seemed we could not get out of our own way. If you look at the scores it looks like we just absolutely got crushed, but there were a lot of times during the match where I thought we were playing well. They went on a seven-point run in the second set and we lost 25-19. One server one run, that was the difference. In the third set we missed six serves which we haven't done that all season. We didn't handle the nerves or adversity very well."

On this weekâ€¦
This is a team that takes responsibility and coaches that take responsibility for the way we played. We are confident we are going to bounce back and have a good week of practice. We have another really tough matchup on Friday. For people who enjoy high-level volleyball, Friday No. 1 Florida is coming to town. After being in the league for four years this is the best team I have seen them have. That's saying a lot. After that match, Saturday we will travel to South Carolina. We are in the middle of a really tough stretch where we play five out of six on the road and all those road matches are going to be tough. Then, our only home match is against the No. 1 team in the nation. A critical part of the season for us but I'm confident in our team that we will bounce back."

On the mental approach preparing for Floridaâ€¦
"We try to do our best to approach everything the same. When the girls watch film, and see that they have a 6-5 and 6-8 middle and a 6-3 pin player, they are just so huge. It's not a typical team we see. Even though we haven't beat them we have played pretty well against them in the past couple of years, hopefully, with our returners, we can build off that a little bit. It's a tough matchup and with the hype and social media everyone knows about the teams and they can watch with the SEC Network and ESPNU. It's not going to be any secret or anything we can pull the wool over our player's eyes. It's going to be a very tough match for us. I think it's one of those if we go into with the mentality we have had all year about just trying to keep getting better it's a measuring stick for us more than anything."

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.

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Players Mentioned

Nayo Warnell

The University of Mississippi Athletics