Oct. 12, 2001
On the team's early deficit
"I think LMU came out really well. Every ball we hit, they dug. And the girls were thinking 'Whoa, they dug us' and 'they dug us again.' The timeout was to tell them we're fine. Just one point at a time. Just steady out and start getting back into this. They didn't do anything to hurt us or open our eyes, they just played well. I think we took that, and we knew they weren't just going to kill us. We needed to do a couple of things differently and have patience, hit the ball a little bit harder and expect to get dug and keep competing to defend them coming back."
On Becky Potter playing in the middle
"We put Becky Potter in the middle last week. After the San Diego loss, we think Becky will be a lot more effective in the middle for us. I think what happened in lieu of that is we have the two best middle blockers in the conference, along with Toni Muratore. We'd like to be able to have something great on the court and that has opened us up. We put Merrin Thompson in the opposite spot, where Becky was and she's given us unbelievable senior leadership and senior steadiness, great serving, great passing, great defending, and not making any errors offensively. She doesn't get a lot of kills that Becky used to get on the right, but she makes up for it in leadership and all-around solid play.
On the final game of the night
"We were able to get on their middle hitters better, we were jumping quicker with their middles. Their middles are quick, so we were jumping just a little bit earlier and got better touches. Kelli Sousa really played a great match, as far as setting the right person at the right time. Jami was wide open, then Toni, then Potter... so she found the girl in transition to score points a lot. We got a lot of easy transition kills. After a dug ball, Kelli sometimes panics and throws really fast... she seemed to take the moment, see who's open, see where the weak block was and give it to that girl."
On playing Pepperdine tomorrow night
"We're ready. We're mentally ready. I think Pepperdine is a bigger, stronger, more offensive team than LMU, but not as good as ball control. I think that will give us the window we need to have in order to take advantage of that and beat them. I think we're going to beat them with quickness, we're going to beat them better ball control. Hopefully we won't give up easy points, but we'll get them from them and be in the match."