SMSU Athletics

Southwest Minnesota State University
Assistant Head Coach Raftyn Rignell's thoughts following the loss to Nebraska-Kearney
“Obviously a tough loss for us tonight, the biggest things we talked about post-match were we just didn’t have the consistency to make plays point for point that we needed to make in order to beat a team like (Nebraska-Kearney) at this point of the year. Seem to kind of have little break downs here and there. Kind of went turn for turn on who was going to do it next. We talked all year about blocking, serving and we don’t feel like those were strong points of our game tonight. We only had 4 blocks to (Nebraska-Kearney) 12 whose got big physical hitters, we need to be able to block the ball and that was one thing that we struggled with.”

Assistant Head Coach Raftyn Rignell on how Nebraska-Kearney focused on shutting down Devin Diedrich and Mary Groth.
“That is something we have been used to all year, it is obviously no secret that our big guns come from the middle and teams have been trying all year to double, triple block them all year and they know that that is coming we just tell them that we need to score around it”

Rachel Westby on how the little things in the 3rd set and how they helped the momentum.
“I guess we were just competing really hard, when we do that things usually go our way so I think we were doing anything we could do to win that game.”

Brooke Burmeister on the keys of the game going into playing Nebraska-Kearney
“We knew going into tonight that we would have to play better than last night. In one of the timeouts Raftyn (Rignell) said that we have to get back to the ‘nitty gritty’ defense and I think that’s what we really focused on in that last couple of games”

Raftyn Rignell on preparing and competing without Head Coach Terry Culhane
“I definitely know their hearts were out there with Terry (Culhane) but we talked to them earlier in the day and said ‘the goal hasn’t changed, we are still here to win the match tonight’ and that’s what Terry (Culhane) would have wanted us to do and they know that. We never wanted to use it as an excuse for anything, we still prepared the same and we still did the same routines had (Terry Culhane) been here. As coaches we still coach the same we still did everything as we normally do and tried to keep the routine as same for the girls as we can.”

Brooke Burmeister on preparing and competing without Head Coach Terry Culhane
“We don’t need our coaches to play, we are the people that need to show up and play, we only need 6 people on the court that are physically able to play to have a game and that (the coaches) are there to kinda help us out. Since he is gone, nothing has really changed at all.”

Brooke Burmeister reflects on the crowd support throughout the year
“Our crowd was tremendous, they helped us out of a lot of tough situations throughout the year, without them we might not have went undefeated at home, it is hard to tell. The energy they bring is probably one of the more important things about our game.”

University of Nebraska-Kearney
Head Coach Rick Squiers’ thoughts following the victory over SMSU
“First of all, we congratulate Southwest Minnesota on a great season and great match. There were some stretches there that were some of the best volleyball I have seen in a long time and I know (SMSU) was playing in some adverse conditions tonight without coach Culhane and certainly our thoughts go out to him for a speedy recovery. We are proud of our team and how they played in a tough environment. Tremendous crowd, a lot of energy here and it made it very difficult for us at times.”
“We couldn’t be more pleased with our players and for them being able to move onto the regional final.”

Head Coach Rick Squiers on how Nebraska-Kearney took away SMSU’s middle hitters
“As a pair of middles, I’m not sure we have played against anybody in my time at UNK that has a better pair of middles than what we saw today. (Diedrich and Groth) put so much pressure on you, both very athletic and they can run behind the setter, in front of the setter. We had to commit to the middles, we had to put two blockers on their middles and we had to steal away a few kills from them by digging the ball and to slow them down enough so that if we played good offense ourselves we would have a good chance to win.”
“We didn’t stop them but we just slowed them down enough.”

Ellie Pesavento on the successfully blocking by Nebraska-Kearney
“We knew that their middles were going to be really good hitters, we knew we had to stay with them and that we had to get good touches on the ball, slow it down, help our defense out and luckily we did that.”

Katyln Heiserman on the defensive pressure installed on the SMSU offense
“The defense really starts up at the front at the net with these girls and they really did do a good job of slowing people down, getting hands in front of people and making our jobs a little easier.”

Head Coach Rick Squiers on how Nebraska-Kearney looks to carry the momentum into the Central Regional Final against Concordia – St. Paul
“Well, we get to enjoy it for a little bit, which we will do. It is a great win for our players and our program so we want to spend a little bit of time tonight staying in the moment. We hope what we can do tomorrow is wake up and prepare for a tremendous team in Concordia – St. Paul. Concordia – St. Paul is ranked number one in the country for a reason, obviously they are a fomattable challenge for us but I think we have a group of girls that look forward to that. We expect to come out and play well and I think if we do that it will be an exciting match.”