home jobs contact us
Our Clients:
Browse by Sport
Find us on ASAP sports on Facebook ASAP sports on Twitter
ASAP Sports RSS Subscribe to RSS
Click to go to
Asaptext.com
ASAPtext.com
ASAP Sports e-Brochure View our
e-Brochure

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN VOLLEYBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE


October 19, 2015


Kelly Sheffield


Madison, Wisconsin

THE MODERATOR: Women's Volleyball Head Coach Kelly Sheffield is here. We will have some opening comments and take questions.

COACH SHEFFIELD: Coming off a week where we played Minnesota twice and, you know, statistically those looked like two real even teams, pretty much the same hitting percentage, same amount of digs, same number of blocks. At the end of the day, we went 0-2 against those guys.

I thought we were better, but -- than what we were previously, and that's kind of the goal, but at the end of the day, I don't think anybody is real happy about going 0-2 during a week.

We've got Iowa in front of us, and Nebraska right after that, and we're excited to get back in the gym.

Q. You talk about getting better. Are there areas you feel that separate you from a Minnesota right now?
COACH SHEFFIELD: We made some -- we're down 24-23 in the second set against them and we get aced to loose 25-23. We had more of those types of errors. When it was -- when it was winning time, they were cleaner than us, and whether that is experience, whether that is mentality, whether that is coaching, I don't know.

But I think at the end of the day, it was two really, really similar teams, and one just had a little bit better -- did a little bit better job at finishing.

Q. You can coach that? Finishing? Or is it up to the players?
COACH SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it's -- I've always thought that, yes, if our players aren't doing something, then that's my fault. And we've got to find a way to fix it. You know, this isn't -- none of us are sitting there going -- you know -- all hell isn't breaking loose or anything. We've got four losses in conference, which is more than any of us are wanting, but at the end of the day those are four losses against teams that are all ranked in the top-10.

With Minnesota you go 0-2, with one being five sets and the other one being four, and statistically it looks like a dead draw, and the other one against Ohio State, which will be ranked, whatever, 6th, 7th, 8th this week, five sets at their place. We feel like we're right there, but at the end of the day our team is still a little bit irritated. You're asking me is that a player thing? Yeah, the players got to get better at playing cleaner when it's on the line, and the coaches have to do a better job of trying to devise in practices and communicating and helping our players through that as well. I think it's on all of us.

Q. Kelly, you have six days off between matches. Do you wish you were right back at it, or is it a good thing that maybe you have some time to tinker in the gym?
COACH SHEFFIELD: We need to practice. So when you go to those midweek matches -- sometimes when you have back-to-back matches, or when you have some space between, like, say, some weeks we play Friday, Sunday, that can be okay, but what it does on the back end is it actually shortens up your week to get better, because you're not practicing hard the day before a match.

We play a Friday/Saturday, which means this week and the following week will be a little bit longer, and, to me, being in the gym is so critical to development, much more so than being able to sit there in the film room, which -- so, yeah, we've got a few days off. We didn't get back until 4:00 in the morning after that late match, so those guys were just recovering yesterday.

We will have a light practice today, but it's nice not to have a weekday match. It will be nice not to have a Sunday match for just training purposes. You've got a young team; you want to be in the gym with 'em.

Q. You only have one senior on your roster, so when you talk about playing clean late, should it really be a shock that there are lapses every now and then with this team, given their youth?
COACH SHEFFIELD: I heard Jalen Rose talk on the radio the other day about the "Fab Five" and how successful those guys were when they were young. We had one senior on our team a couple of years ago that ended up by the end of the year was playing pretty well. We don't sit there too much and talk about our age. What we talk about is what do we need to do to become the team that we are capable of becoming, and to be as good as what we are capable of being, we are going to have to clean some of this stuff up a little bit, and it's not major stuff, it's just -- we just got get better. We gotta get better in a lot of different areas, and we are.

There is no question, that -- anybody -- you don't even need to look at the stats, anybody that just watches our team is saying, man this team's better than what you were a month ago. But if you're going to go into -- you're going to go into somebody else's place, like the team that we just saw, and you're wanting to go in there and you want to win, when it's winning time, you're going to have to play a little bit cleaner than what we did to beat that caliber of a team. And we're getting there; we're just not there yet.

Q. The Fab Five guys called (No microphone.)
COACH SHEFFIELD: That was coaching. (Laughing.) I don't know. Touche. Are you old enough to remember that?

Q. No.
COACH SHEFFIELD: Okay, I didn't think so. (Laughter.)

Q. I've seen it; I think everybody has, but I don't remember it.
THE MODERATOR: Anything else for Coach? Thanks, Kelly.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP sports

tech 129
About ASAP SportsFastScripts ArchiveRecent InterviewsCaptioningUpcoming EventsContact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297