	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

NCAA WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

December 15, 2016

Columbus, Ohio

Texas - 3, Nebraska - 0

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Coach John Cook and student-athletes Mikaela Foecke, Kelly Hunter and Kadie Rolfzen. Coach, if you want to start with your thoughts tonight.

COACH COOK: I want to thank Columbus. The whole setup is has been great. They're doing really cool things, things that are special, that it's going to make this a very memorable Final Four. And I want to thank our Husker fans who showed up. I saw a lot of red out there tonight.

Texas deserves a lot of credit. They played really well. We just couldn't get in a rhythm and put enough pressure on them. So they certainly deserved to win.

When you make eight hitting errors in a three-game winning match that's a great night. So they played really well and deserved a 3-0 victory.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes.

Q. Kadie, what sort of pressure did Texas' block put on you tonight? And was that the biggest part of the team's struggles offensively?
KADIE ROLFZEN: No, I don't think that was our biggest struggle. But at the same time Texas is physical. They're a big block. And every day in practice we have a drill called trash can. So we're used to going up against that block. But just today we just didn't execute a lot of the time.

But yeah, they're big, they're physical, and you just have to be smart when you're going up there and hitting against them.

Q. Kelly, seemed like every time you guys pulled close tonight, you just couldn't quite get over the hump and make that run to get ahead of them. Did you feel like you just never got in the groove?
KELLY HUNTER: I think they just took control of the match from the start. And it was pretty hard for us to get it back.

So I think every time we did make a run for it, they answered right back. And they were very low error, which is hard to play against. And we were kind of the opposite. So just their mentality, they were fired up. They took it from us right from the start.

Q. Kelly, seemed like Ebony Nwanebu was really hard for you to read, but also she hits it so darn hard. What was it about her in particular that was hard to stop?
KELLY HUNTER: Like Kadie said, their whole team is very physical. The thing with Ebony is you can have a perfect block set up and she can still go over you. And a lot of their hitters are like that, too. She just mixed up her shots. She didn't have a specific tendency where we could really just shut her down there. But she didn't make very many errors. She just moves the ball around. And I think that was tough for us.

Q. Kadie, can you talk about just what it took to get through this season? Every match out there, everybody's coming for you, everybody's gunning for you. You've got to dig down, defending champions, you know what's out there. Do you feel like all that caught up to you tonight, and the tank was a little more empty than you guys would like it to be?
KADIE ROLFZEN: Tonight, to answer your question, yeah, it sucks this is how we lost, but at the same time kind of like what you were saying this year, obviously being the defending national champions everyone was going to give us their best shot. But them doing it allowed us to play better every game. I think we -- I don't know how many times did we play Minnesota or Wisconsin, number one, number two, whatever. This whole year.

We won the Big Ten, arguably the toughest conference in volleyball. So I just think, yeah, today we were a little flat. But at the same time we did have a spectacular year, especially for the seniors, like, I wouldn't regret anything this year. And, yeah.

Q. Mikaela, this is a team at the beginning of the year you had a lot of success with, had a three-set victory. How much did you see their play tonight just a totally different team?
MIKAELA FOECKE: I think they're a lot better team. They've grown throughout the year, as have we. And they had a little different look on us, and they played a great match tonight. And I think we just didn't play our best, and it really showed.

Q. Kelly, what was the thought after the second set -- you guys had been in this position before -- what was the thought what you would have to do going forward to get back into the match?
KELLY HUNTER: Obviously we knew we could do it but we knew it wasn't going to be easy. And we would have to go and take it from them.

But we just knew if he were going to win the match we had to make a huge change. I don't know. It was just a little flat for us, like we said. So we just said if we're going to win this we're going to have to take it from them and that was basically it.

And I think their play was just awesome tonight. So it was pretty hard for us to do that.

Q. Kadie, you guys so often control a match with your serving, your passing, but was Texas the team that sort of shifted the match in their way with that tonight?
KADIE ROLFZEN: I know we harp on serve and pass every day, and that's probably the biggest drill we do every day. And I just think today they had an excellent serve-and-pass day and I don't know.

So besides that, they were in system a lot more than, I guess, we were used to last time we played them. So they were able to get their offense going a lot quicker and it was harder to defend.

Q. Kadie and Kelly, with Amber as well, the three of you played together for so long. Are you happy with the way that your careers have turned out, winning a national championship and making the runs you guys have made the last three years together in college?
KELLY HUNTER: Yeah, I mean coming from the same high school having three girls going to the same Division I school and being as successful as we were is pretty special. Obviously it didn't end how we wanted it to tonight, but our whole season as a whole, I think, we grew so much and last year winning it with them was a really cool feeling.

And I know everything's going to be really different next year, because they get to leave and I stay another year with these guys, like Mikaela and them. But I think just the fact we all came from the same high school and we were able to be so successful is just really special, and it's something I'll never forget, obviously.

KADIE ROLFZEN: Yeah, so kind of like Kelly said, coming from the same high school is a big deal. But we grew up in Nebraska, and I just think being able to go and, like, watch like Jordan play, and she was my idol growing up and, dang it, I don't know like I've always wanted to come here, and these last four years are the best years of my life. And I wanted to win a Big Ten championship. We got to do that. I wanted to win a national championship. We got to do that.

So kind of like I said earlier, I wouldn't regret anything from these past four years. I think I've grown more as a person than I have as a volleyball player. And to be able to be with Kelly since eighth grade. We knew each other in and out. And so it was pretty special four years. And, yeah, it sucks that this is how we lost tonight, but this one game doesn't define our career. And just looking back it's just going to be a pretty special time that I had here.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for Coach.

Q. A few too many mistakes tonight at the points where you were almost there. Missed serve. You had the slide set to nobody back there. Was that kind of uncharacteristic of the Nebraska team?
COACH COOK: Very uncharacteristic. And I think we were just really pressing tonight. And then once we sensed that Texas was playing really well, and we were having a hard time stopping them, I mean, I think, we're the best defensive team in the country. And we let them hit .321 tonight. So just when we couldn't stop them, it just forced -- we started pressing a little bit trying harder and that's why you saw those types of plays. I saw stuff I haven't seen all year tonight.

But that's what happens in a match like this sometimes. And, of course, we've seen it happen to other teams. But again Texas deserves a lot of credit.

Q. What did you think about your blocking matchup against Paulina and how did she do against you?
COACH COOK: We had one block tonight. So if you would have told me we would play a match and have one block I would have bet my house we would have more than that.

So I think we were just for some reason we were really undisciplined tonight. I think again it all goes, filters back to we were trying too hard. We thought we had to make these super human moves on these guys. And we were just trying a little too hard. And that's -- we became a very undisciplined blocking team. And we had them out of system quite a few times and we let them get out of it. And that was kind of the lesson we learned against Penn State but we fixed it after two games. And tonight we couldn't fix it.

Q. Did you sense at all going in that the team was anxious or flat or that there was anything amiss, I guess?
COACH COOK: No, we've had a great week of practice. They've been -- this team has done an unbelievable job the whole season of being consistent with everything they do and I felt really good going in tonight. I felt we were going to play a great match.

I was some what surprised but after watching both matches, I'm starting to wonder for us and Minnesota if playing so many hard matches this year in the Big Ten did take some of it out of us.

And you've got two teams who didn't win their conference are going to play for the national championship. Maybe they trained through their conference. Maybe they didn't peak early. We had to peak just to survive our conference. We had to be peaking every week. And so I wonder if there's something to that because I didn't think Minnesota looked like the Minnesota I've seen tonight either.

Q. Wanted to ask you about Foecke. She played pretty well tonight. She does some stuff besides hammer the ball. She made some really good scramble plays where she controlled the ball. Could you talk a little bit about having her two years now and two more years to go?
COACH COOK: Mikaela is a great competitor. And she, the bigger the match the better she plays. And our goal for her now is to make her a six rotation player. So we've been working on it. That will be a real emphasis in the offseason and going into next year. We'll need her. But she might be, I don't know if I want to put it up there right now but she's a great back row hitter. And I think we can use that as part of our offense next year. She's just a very natural, great hitter out of the back row. And we sometimes have her simulate other people in practice to defend it. And we can't even come close to stopping it. So that's the next evolution for her. And I think she can be one of the premier offside hitters in the country.

Q. How do you think this match will change how you look at this season and this two-year stretch in the program?
COACH COOK: I told them after the match that I don't know this year anything we've done different. I have no regrets. Nothing I would have changed. Nothing I would have done different. I felt like it was a great season. I think Kadie nailed it. This group's won a national championship. They won a Big Ten championship. It's hard to go back to back and win national championships. We took -- we've beaten how many top five teams number one teams over the last couple of years. They've done a lot of high level volleyball and probably had the best record in the last two years especially against the number of ranked teams we had to play.

I don't know what we would have done different. They've done a heck of a job and the senior class is really special and I told them we're going to be talking about them a long time of all the good stuff they've done the good work they've done how they prepared and gone about it. And just really, really proud of this team. So, no, like you said you can't define it on one match. You've got to look at their body of work and it's been an incredible body of work for the last couple of years. And so really, really proud of that.

Q. Did you sense a little bit just the sheer physicality of Texas and Stanford especially when you're talking about the Big Ten, what a grind it is, did that play a part in tonight too?
COACH COOK: I think so. Stanford's a very unique team. And until you play them, it's probably hard to, you know, know how to play them. But I think it was a bad matchup for Minnesota. But I saw Minnesota tonight did not look like the Minnesota I saw during the Big Ten season. They looked to me tired and a little bit flat. And tonight I didn't think we were that flat or tired, but we just were frantic a little bit.

And I don't think it was Texas's physicality that did that to us. I just think we were pressing. We were just trying too hard. We wanted it too much and it caused us to like do uncharacteristic things. And just tried too hard and I feel like that's what we were doing. I was trying to get them to calm down. I thought maybe after we burned off a little adrenalin maybe we would settle down. But we were just all over the place. And, again, Texas never let up. So they kept it on us.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297