On the season so far…

?We?re excited. I think we?re still flying high after a big win over Purdue. Saturday night there was a deafening crowd and we went five games. It could have gone either way and our players showed so much poise and fight and passion for every single point. We are so young. We have one senior on our team and the rest are underclassmen and some of our underclassmen have been waiting to fill a spot with an upperclassmen graduating. We feel really good about that. We have conference play opening up this weekend so we feel doubly good about the two (tournament) wins back-to-back these two weekends.

On the recent tournaments…

?In volleyball, we play tournaments to prepare us for conference play. In those tournaments, we?ll play three different teams in a weekend. So, you?re asking a lot from your players to play three styles of play, three styles of defenses and three types of offenses to get ready. So, we?re very pleased.

On the status of the team…

?The players are where we feel we need to be (entering SEC play). We have really addressed, primarily, our defensive piece. You hear this constantly, but defense truly does win. From our standpoint, we have to defend and we have to defend all the time. When we serve you immediate defend their offense. When you receive serve, you?re defending their serve and immediately going into offense. We feel very good where we are. Right now we are one of the top blocking and digging teams in the nation, which doesn?t always go hand in hand. Typically, you are a very outstanding blocking team or are an outstanding digging team. The fact that we are putting those two pieces together, we feel very good about that.

On the Kentucky offense…

?Offensively, we?ve picked up the pace. Our team hit over .300 against Purdue. If you know baseball, you understand that is quite good. We played five games and there was a total of 179 to 177 total points scored. We won by two when you combine those five games.?