Kentucky Volleyball Press Conference
Craig Skinner
On Winning the SEC Championship …
“It means a lot. You try to compete, you set goals to win championships and that’s your objective when you’re in a conference like the SEC. Being close several times, it’s good to get it done. I just always wanted the players to feel what it’s like to win a championship. A lot of hard work came to fruition. The ability to get it done and knowing when we lost to Florida that we had to win seven straight, it’s a challenge and the team showed a lot of toughness getting it done.”
On hosting the NCAA First and Second Rounds in Memorial Coliseum …
“We’ve hosted before and had the opportunity to do that. I’d say the excitement and the enthusiasm of the volleyball community in Lexington is off the charts right now with the growth of the sport in the state and this city. Our success, the success of club volleyball, the success of high school volleyball around the area has been huge. For us to be able to host an event like this, I think, continues our deal of always wanting to grow the game of volleyball. I think we’re seeing it before our eyes. I think we’re seeing a movement of attendance in college volleyball around the country and it’s pretty special to be a part of.”
On Kentucky, Western Kentucky and Louisville all winning conference titles …
“I didn’t even think about that until you brought that up, that’s pretty cool. For all three of us to be able to win a conference championship from the same state, I don’t know how many other states who have three universities like that who have done it. That’s an awesome accomplishment for a state this size to be able to do that in the conferences like we play in. I think it says a heck of a lot about the grass roots of the sport in the state, I think it says a lot about the commitment of the universities to make the sport important, I think it says a lot about the coaching staffs at each university. To be able to sustain success over a long period of time is difficult. What a great year for our sport.”
On what he likes about Friday’s matchup against ETSU …
“I like the chance that we get to play again. I like the fact that we’re playing against a team that did win their league and did have success. As a program, we need to be prepared, we need to know what the tendencies are of East Tennessee. They’re very well-coached, very organized, very disciplined. Lindsey (Devine) does a great job. They have a bunch of players who can score points, so it’s our job to figure out how to take advantage of our size at the net.”
What’s been the process of turning the page from last week’s matches …
“Probably doing a good job of fine-tuning some things and keeping them fresh and motivated at the same time. Being off from Friday to Friday is about as long of a break as we’ve had. Trying to manage when we practice and when we don’t practice. I don’t worry about our players individually, they’re a very competitive group and very tough, so I know they’ll be ready to compete. The first 10 or 15 points, we’re probably going to have to iron out some things because we’ve had a little bit of a break here. Just be patient and try to work back into our rhythm we had at the end of the conference season.”
On the UK senior class …
“I’ve used this word a lot in the last month, when people ask who we recruit and what type of player we look for. You need to have, no matter how good of an athlete you are, you have to care. You’ve got to care about yourself, about leading yourself, about your university, about your teammates. I don’t use that word lightly because it’s very important, no matter what you do. This group of seniors cares one heck of a lot about each other and they care a lot about the legacy that they leave with this program. I challenged them last summer not to have a great year, but to leave the program in better shape than it was when they got here. I think they took that to heart and we’ve made a big step towards that. I think they are motivated and they are as excited to see someone on their team do well as they are for themselves to get recognition and I think that’s a special quality.”
What are some of the biggest changes he has seen during his time at UK …
“Probably a couple of things. One is the physicality of our athletes. My first coaching job, in 1994, we had one player that touched over 10 feet. We have eight players on this team that touch over 10 feet, and a couple of them over 10-6. So the physicality and the dominance at the net is something that is at an all-time high. You see some impressive blocks, some impressive kills, you see kids hitting the ball 50, 60 miles an hour, that’s an exciting thing to see. In our sport in women’s volleyball, the net is seven feet, four inches, in men’s volleyball it’s eight feet. In basketball, the rim is the same height. In our sport, you see the power and the athleticism, the jump, that’s pretty exceptional.
The other thing that we’re seeing is that we have now probably second and third generations of mothers who played college volleyball and now they have daughters or grand-daughters that are playing the sport. The movement of people watching our sport in the stands is impressive. Along with that comes expectations, comes accountability to the coaches and players to be really good. That excites me because when I took the job, Mitch (Barnhart) challenged me to make this a nationally-prominent program. I didn’t want to go to a place that didn’t care about that. Now, I think almost every program you see, they care about how you do and that motivates us on a daily basis.”
On whether coming back in matches can help the team in the postseason …
“It’s important. You want to be in tough situations, you want to me down and learn how to fight back, you want to be in front of big crowds, to know what that feels like. You want to have media coverage to know that there’s distractions and things going on to try to narrow your focus. I won’t put anything past this team, they showed toughness in situations like that and I think that’s the sign of a mature team. One of our themes all year is ‘be where your feet are.’ Regardless of the score, you still have to execute this point and if our mind is elsewhere, we’re not going to be at our best in that point in time. That’s important. We’ve been down 2-0, we’ve been tied 1-1, we’ve lost 3-0, we’ve won 3-0, so a variety of different scenarios is very good as you head into the postseason.”
On how gratifying this season has been …
“It’s certainly gratifying because you come in coaching and as a teacher, you want to see people evolve and develop and you want to see a program evolve and develop. When we first got here, there was 100 people in the stands. My dream was to fill this place up. We’ve come close and have had huge crowds. I came from a program that sold out every match. The dream was to try to get to that point, match that program and go beyond. We’re certainly not there, but we’re knocking on the door. We continued to knock on the door for a conference championship, and we continue to knock on the door of going deep in the NCAA Tournament. You can’t do that and, backing up a bit, I didn’t want to have a good team, I wanted to have a great program. It’s gratifying where we are, but I’m still motivated to get to a different place.”
On Olivia Dailey and her role on this year’s team …
“In August, we talked about that we have 17 players and six can be on the floor at the same time. There’s nothing wrong with being upset if you’re not playing. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be playing if you’re not. It’s how you manage that and what type of teammate you are when things don’t go as you exactly draw them up. Olivia has been a rock for us all year. Our practices have been phenomenal all year and she’s been very good in those practices. She’s been nothing short of a great teammate. That’s a huge advantage that we have right now is people like Olivia Dailey understanding how important her role is to our success, even when it’s not the same as it was before.”
On his expectations for this team at the beginning of the season …
“We knew we had a lot of physical talent returning, we had a great recruiting class coming in. Our team talked in January about competing for an SEC championship and going beyond what we have (done) in the NCAA Tournament. We didn’t shy away from setting the expectation high for ourselves. It hasn’t been easy and we’ve had to overcome some challenges that some people see and some people don’t see. The physical talent was there, the character was there, the leadership was there, we just had to get the right blueprint in order to chip away at it each day and each week.”
On Western Kentucky …
“Travis Hudson is one of the top ten coaches in America. Just look at his record, his winning percentage, it’s ridiculous. He’s got a great team and a great program. We have to pay attention. I have seen them a couple of times this season and they are a lot different team than they were in August, and that’s the sign of a great coach and a great team to evolve from where you started from. I think all the teams here have done that. East Tennessee started in one place, they’re in a different place now. We started in one place and we’re in a different place now. Notre Dame hasn’t been in the NCAA Tournament in a long time, but their coach is a national championship coach from Washington and he’s got them playing really well. So it’s a great field here in Lexington.”
On how the home match against Florida prepared the team for the postseason …
“It goes back to it’s one of those environments, experiences you need to feel and be a part of to kind of know how to respond and how to perform and play. It was an opportunity for us to learn a lot about ourselves. As a coach you kind of think ‘where do we go from here and how do we get better.’ Our benchmarks and stats that we look at each and every match continued to go up after that match. So I’d like to think we took that loss as an opportunity and, as a team, really impressed with the way we responded.”
