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NCAA Second Round Postgame Quotes
Wisconsin vs. Illinois State
Dec. 5, 2014
UW Fieldhouse - Madison, Wis.

Wisconsin Head Coach Kelly Sheffield
Opening statement:
"First of all, I want to congratulate Illinois State on a great season. I'd say, to go undefeated in their league, that's a really good league and that just doesn't happen very often. There's not too many teams that are able to go and win 23 matches in a row. Tonight, they gave us everything we could handle. Defensively, that's a really, really good team. Their libero was outstanding tonight. She gave us a lot of fits. I thought their setter did a really good job of mixing the ball around. It was tough to score on them. It was really tough for us to score on those guys. They played hard, and I thought we did a good job of getting touches and trying to slow down their middle. She's an awful handful. As far as us, I thought we did a really good job serving. I thought we did a great job serving and keeping them off-balance and putting pressure on them. Early on, we were getting our outsides involved, and a little bit later on, we got our middles and right side going. We're excited to be going to the next round. We're really appreciative of the crowd that came out both these nights. I think we doubled the attendance from what there was last year and they're into it. We've got three seniors up here that just played their last match in the Field House, and I thought it was a great effort from the seniors tonight. We had a very appreciate crowd that was really big and helpful."

On what things they had planned for tonight and how they played out:
"We don't see a lot of teams that are running double quicks at us in front of the setter. We spent a little bit of time on that earlier in the week, and a setter that likes to be aggressive, and we spent a lot of time this week earlier in practice on that. I thought we executed our game plan. It wasn't perfect, but I thought we did a really good job against a really good team that was really doing their best to keep us off balance. The tempos of their outside sets were really difficult. They change their plays a lot and they give you a lot of different looks. I thought we did a really good job of communicating at the net. That's something that we've really stressed and gotten better at as the season has gone on. Sometimes when the teams continually changing their plays, it's hard to get into a rhythm. You've really got to do a good job of recognizing and communicating in the front row to the back row, and the back row to the front row. I thought we did a pretty good job of that against a team that's really going to try to challenge in that way."

On how close to 100 percent they feel at this point in the season:
"I think we're still getting better. We can play better than what we played tonight. It was a good effort, a really good effort, and we're going to have to play better. That's just what you've got to be doing as you go through the tournament. The teams get more challenging and stakes get a little bit higher. You've got to be prepared to bring it. You're on a team that won 27 matches and they didn't score 20 points on you. Sometimes you can sit up there and find a whole lot of things to complain about and be frustrated about. But at the end of the day, that's a pretty good effort that we saw from our team tonight. We'll take that effort and take that win over a very good team and try to get ready for our next opponent, whoever that is."

On if the officiating took away from what they were trying to do tonight:
"I thought the officiating was pretty good. There were a lot of rallies, and when the rallies are that long, those can be pretty challenging matches to officiate. Especially when the opposing team was serving on the whistle, so there wasn't a lot of time for anybody, including the officials, to catch their breath. We had two teams that were fighting, and two coaching staffs that were fighting as well, it's not Mayberry out there. We're going to get out there and fight and scratch together."

OH Ellen Chapman
On what her senior moment was like:
"Well of course it's a little bit weird knowing that that was our last match in the Field House. We've been here for four years, we've had so many moments and so many great times, so many memorable things. I was sad about that, but I'm not sad about much else because I know we're going to accomplish so much more this season. Whether we're playing here, whether we're playing in Louisville, wherever we're playing, I know that it's more about who you're with than the place, I think."

On if the officiating took away from what they were trying to do tonight:
"With volleyball, there's always going to be calls that you disagree with. It goes both ways for any team. You just have to learn how to deal with that. Maybe, yeah, we let them get a couple too many points and some of them were our errors, but they were just playing some great volleyball. There's always going to be those types of calls but you just have to bounce back and forget about it."

MB Dominique Thompson
On what her senior moment was like:
"I think it's also a time that you just never think is going to happen, you never think that your last game is going to happen. You always think you have forever left, but I think it was just kind of an emotional time because we're really excited, we're in the Sweet Sixteen, but we also know that it's the last time we'll play in front of our home crowd. Overall, it's just a rush of emotion, but it's a really exciting time."

OH Courtney Thomas
On what her senior moment was like:
"Dominique (Thompson) looked at me and she goes, 'Are you going to choke up? Because I am,' and we got tears in our eyes, and Deme Morales looked at me, and she got tears in her eyes. It's tears of joy. It's not because we're sad, it's just because of what we've accomplished this year and last year, I mean we won the Big Ten in our own home, I think that was really cool. All those emotions come back when that ends. We couldn't be more proud and happier to end it here. It's awesome."

On the slow start in the second match for the second night in a row:
"I definitely wouldn't say that it's on purpose. That's not our game plan, but I just think we come out of the first game and we're trying to focus, then we go into the second game and just happen to get down. I think that our team is good at battling back, no matter where we're at in a game. No matter if it's third game, fourth game, or fifth. We came back and took away the game."

On if serving aggressively was on the game plan:
"Yeah, I think it was on the game plan. We always want to serve tough, that's our mojo, we like to serve tough and pass well. So we're going in there with good hand contact. Move them around and serve whoever we can, try to get an ace. I think the aces just fell how they fell."

Head Coach Melissa Myers
Opening thoughts about the match tonight:
"I'll just start by saying that I think this team made me incredibly proud tonight. I thought they played very hard and I thought they fought until the end. We just maybe didn't have enough fire power, but at the end of the day this is a very good Wisconsin team and the fact that we had some pretty long rallies and made them a little uncomfortable at times throughout the match is a win for us. I thought there were some really good things we did tonight and I'm proud of this team."

On whether she felt the team needed to be aggressive with their serving tonight:
"Clearly no aces and eight errors is not going to be a good situation for us. Yeah we were pretty aggressive, and I think we were trying to go for some deep corners and to be quite honest, some of those misses weren't by more than maybe a foot or so. So I told them, "Way to stay aggressive and way to go after it, if we could just err inside instead of outside that would be great." But yeah I think they were playing hard, they were playing aggressive and you have to take some risks against a team like this and I think that was one of the risks we were taking."

On what she thinks of the blocking numbers in tonight's match:
"Again, Wisconsin is a big strong team, a very good blocking team. I thought we did a great job in the third set, we got three blocks in there but they had seven. And as the match went on they blocked better. But I thought we were taking some big swings, and again trying to take some big swings because we knew at times that that was how we were going to score. They were playing pretty good defense, there were some really good rallies in there and some great plays but at the end of the day, they're a big strong blocking team and we knew they were going to have that presence we just didn't execute."

On whether Wisconsin is the most complete opponent ISU has run into this season:
"By far, yes, this is the best team we've played all year, and we just talked about that. This is for sure the best team and I thought we played well with good effort."

On how tough Wisconsin's schedule was this season:
"Their only two losses were to Penn State and Washington, so it was a pretty incredible schedule. And in the Big Ten it's a battle. I mean they played great teams and they're a great team and we wish them the best of luck as they go into the tournament, we'd love to see them do really well."

Senior DS Emily Orrick
On how she thought the team played against a potential NCAA champion…
"I don't have any regrets, I'm really glad we got to play a team like that. It was a great experience to end our season here. There's a reason they are seeded fourth, and I wish them the best of luck going on with their season, but I don't have any regrets with how our team played tonight."

Senior OH Stacey Niao
On whether this was the appropriate stage for the six seniors to go out on:
"Yes, you couldn't really ask for a better way to leave. To play the No. 4 team in the nation and to give them a good run for their money is the best we could have asked for. We put it all out on the court today, we couldn't have asked for anything better for the girls and they played awesome so we're happy and we're going to go out with our heads high."