Head coach Kelly Sheffield

Opening statement: "That's a really good Western Kentucky team.  We knew they would be.  We knew they would present us a challenge.  Nothing that we saw out of them surprised me at all.  

"They are very well coached.  It is a team that plays with an awful lot of heart.  They are very competitive and that's his teams year in and year out, that's why they win so many matches.  

"That's a team that's been together, they have played together for a while and they got stronger as the match went on. We weren't able to match that and we weren't able to slow them down. I thought they made some great adjustments and on our side, they exposed an awful lot.  Now it's time to get back to work and find ways to keep improving."

Lauren Carlini

On winning the first set:
"I think we came out on a high and we were super excited to play against somebody and not each other.  We came out strong and then they came right back at us in the second game and then the rest of the match and we were kind of on our heels from there on out. We weren't really able to get traction and get a significant lead.  I feel like they just had a lot of the momentum during that match."

On the Western Kentucky defense:
"They are a super scrappy team and they take a lot of pride on their defense and it is very hard to score on them.  We knew that coming in but I don't think we made the adjustments we needed to coming in, but that's a good lesson for us, moving forward we have to be able to adjust quicker and just adapt to whatever the game plan is."

On the Badger offense being out of sync:
"Not really out of sync, there were just some errors. There are new players on the team and that's obviously not an excuse at all but there are always those communication errors that need to be fixed and at the time we weren't able to do that. That communication is something we definitely have to fix and those connection errors, we can't have as many as we did in this match."

On how the team can learn from this:
"I mean there are always learning opportunities along the way and this is one of them.  It just happens to be our first match, which can be good but also be bad. We just have to look at it as a positive right now, moving forward knowing that we have to better. We have to be more passionate when we play and just be able to put runs together is going to be huge for us. We have to find those opportunities to learn and use tonight as an advantage moving forward."

Lauryn Gillis

On playing in the Field House for the first time:
"The experience was amazing. When we were down a few points and they would get a few points back, you could just hear the crowd really try to pump us back up. That was a really good feeling.  I think it helped a lot and it's different from what I've been used to. It was an awesome experience."  

On the adversity of losing the first match:
"I think that this will really test our team and our mentality and if we bounce right back, that shows how tough we are and what we need to improve. That was just the first game and just bounce back and respond."