Indiana University Athletics
Recapping The Louisville Spring Tournament
3/27/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
March 27, 2007
The Indiana volleyball team opened its spring schedule at a round robin tournament at Louisville on March 24. Head coach Sherry Dunbar sat down with IUHOOSIERS.com to discuss how the team played at the event.
General thoughts on the tournament:
"I thought the tournament was good for us as a coaching staff because we
really wanted to see them play. We haven't seen them play in that type of
situation. That was the positive thing, just to watch them on a court
against a team, see how they interact, see how they competed. That was
probably our biggest goal, to see what they were transferring from practice
to the competition site, because that is where it gets hard."
On how the team is progressing:
"I think they're definitely getting better in practice, and in controlled
situations we're seeing a lot of progress. That's the good thing in
practice. When you add another team, we haven't done a lot of team stuff in
practice yet, so I think they were kind of out of their comfort zone (this weekend), trying to put together controlled situations in a team situation."
On what she thought went well on the day:
"I was excited about their energy, I thought some people stood out to me that I didn't know would stand out and I was excited about seeing that. I thought Juli (Pierce) had a really good tournament overall. She had to play front row which, she's really not going to be doing and she hasn't trained at that at all this whole spring, but we don't really have another outside hitter so she had to play front row and she did a great job. But it wasn't just that that I was impressed with, I just thought that she played consistently throughout the day and showed some really good signs with passing and defense and that's obviously our primary concern with her, that she's a good passer and a good defensive player. I was really excited about that. I think with Erica (Short) and her athletic ability we can be pretty creative in running offense and doing a lot of things because of the ability that she has. I'm really excited about the process we're going to go through with her because she has so many good skills that she can add to the team and make us better."
On what the team can do to improve:
"I think we still have a ton of work to do and I think the kids realize that, and that's a good thing. I mean, they're seeing that now, that it's not where we want to be. We did a lot of stating, and the things we really want to focus on right now is the transfer of taking that practice
information and relating that to a team event. I think that's what I'm going to look for next weekend when we go to Purdue. I think that's the most important thing. I'm not really as interested in the wins and losses right now, it's that they're understanding the information that we're giving them. I think they are in practice, but I think they reverted back to a comfort zone when they started playing, and that's easy to do. We would like them to really focus on 'Ok, I'm going to change this, I'm going to do this the right way, no matter what happens.' If they start doing that more, I think they're going to find more success."
