Quote the Horns (Sept. 4)
Sept. 4, 2009
Texas opened played on Thursday night at the Hawaiian Airlines Wahine Classic with a 3-1 victory over No. 10 California. The No. 2 Longhorns are now 3-0 on the season and will resume action on Saturday, Sept. 5 when they meet No. 4 Hawaii. Read UT head coach Jerritt Elliott's thoughts on the first match of the tourney below. Head coach Jerritt Elliott On Ashley Engle's performance: I think balance and keeping teams out of rhythm are very important in terms of a successful team. Ashley is arguably one of the better setters in the country with her ability to keep teams off balance. With the pin hitters that we have we can create a lot of seams and opportunities for her to be aggressive. She got a little bit more involved tonight and that allowed us to be more successful with our entire offense. On the team's blocking and depth: It's nice to be able to look to the bench and have confidence to bring every player into the match. When we needed a little bit more size with (Jennifer) Doris, she came into the match and did a really nice job. She had a great practice yesterday and came in and provided a spark for us. I was also very impressed with Cristina (Arenas). She hasn't seen much action, but tonight she stepped in against a great opponent and served some very nice scoring runs for us. It was nice to see us get better on the things that we worked on as a team this week in practice. That is the big key for us. If we can continue to make those improvements from practice we will continue to get better as a team.
On the difference between the first set and the final three sets: Cal is a very good team. We made a few too many attacking errors in the first set in terms of not challenging high at the net. I thought we made better attacking selections in the final three sets. I thought our passing steadied out and ultimately I thought our block wore down their hitters. On Sydney Yogi's performance: I loved her game. Sydney is getting better and better. The battle for the libero jersey between her and Heather (Kisner) has been very tight throughout the preseason. She is definitely going to get her shot at some point. She has a great attitude and she is our best defender. Both of our liberos are great and they are dedicated to nothing else other than winning |
|
