Wisconsin Postgame Quotes
Wisconsin vs. Purdue
October 30, 2015
UW Field House – Madison, Wis.

Kelly Sheffield
On opening statement:
"I thought Kelli Bates battled really well tonight. They put an awful lot a pressure on her (in) serve receive, and we gave her an awful lot of sets. She was passing by far the majority of the balls. She passed 42 serves tonight and the next highest was 12, so they were really targeting her.

"I thought as the match went on, her ball control got better and better and we were able to get a lot of people involved and in the meantime, she was able to get 17 kills for us and hit .286. She's playing the way that we know she can play.

"I thought Romana Kriskova did a brilliant job of lulling them to sleep in the middle of the match. We got her the ball a little bit more there at the end, and she did a really nice job.

"We challenged our serves to be a little bit more aggressive after game two, and I thought we were and that was a factor as well."

On the turning point in the third set:
"I thought Madison Duello and Amber MacDonald got on some serving runs for us. I thought we really weren't getting much out of Amber from the service line early on in the match. They were having no problems passing her serve and siding out pretty quick. We went after some different areas of the court with her, and that really paid some dividends.

"Madison she got us back (into the match) and made a couple nice digs. I thought Amber and Madison, both of those guys, got us on some nice runs and the comeback was nice. Amber there in the fourth really did a good job and then we brought Madison out of the bullpen to pick up that last point."

Kelli Bates
On the key to holding her composure when she's under attack:
"I've kind of been anticipating teams, every single Big Ten team, to target me anyways and I work on serve receive every single day, so I'm not worried about where my serve receive is at.

"Tonight wasn't my best serve receive night but at the same time, I know that teams are going to be targeting me and I'm way better at this point than I was last year at being able to bounce back if I get aced, or if a pass wasn't where I wanted it to be. I'm a lot more mentally tough. It's one of those things where if teams are just going to keep targeting me, then fine, keep coming at me. It's not a problem for me at all."

On what it means for the offense when both she and Gillis get a lot of swings at the ball:
"Yeah, it really does open up for the rest of our offense because if we're not getting the kills that we need to as outsides in this conference, then teams are going to key in on people like Romana and Tionna Williams and Haleigh Nelson so.

"Gilly and I have just kind of had to make the switch of so that we have to be the ones putting the ball down in these situations and so when we are able to do that, Ro is able to get these huge opportunities and obviously we have a great setter in Lauren (Carlini) who is able to feed balls back to her, so when we're doing our job, it makes the rest of the team feel a lot more comfortable."

On countering Purdue's tall front line:
"Well, for me personally, I'm a smaller hitter so my best shot isn't going to be a ball that is going to be blasted through the block. That's kind of what we scouted out in film is that I'm going to have to use my hands a lot and I'm going to have to be really crafty with my shots. That's how I went into the game not thinking too much about of where I want to hit it, but more so how I'm going to attack the block and I guess that ended up working in my favor."

Romana Kriskova
On what was going on in the fourth set for her:
"Well, the game was tied in the set and I was glad that I got an opportunity to score. I was glad that the setter was trusting me and I was just believing that I could help the team."