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Sept. 8, 2010

Head coach Jerritt Elliott
On the team's tough non-conference schedule: We're excited about the weekend.  I scheduled these matches to learn about our team, to get them in these types of situations.  At Texas, you are expected to be in these situations and learn how to win and make the adjustments that you need to.  This tournament is set up to build this team in terms of letting them understand what it's going to take to be there at the end of the year.  Whether we win this tournament or not, is not going to be a reflection of where we are going to be at the end of the year and we understand that.  It's a young team. We need to be patient and allow them to grow, and we have a really good staff to allow that to happen.

On the importance of coming back strong after being swept by then-No. 5 Illinois: You prefer not to go down 3-0, and I think we're a good enough team where that shouldn't happen, but it happens all the time.  We've been on the giving end of that and we've been on the receiving end of that numerous times. The game is so short and anything can happen on a given night. It's about executing and putting pressure on teams.  Our goal is to be in there and be competitive and give ourselves a chance to win and learn to build a lot on our chemistry, our team toughness and our unity.

On facilitating growth for a young team: We have two captains right now in Sydney [Yogi] and Juliann [Faucette] and Juliann is very vocal.  She is more vocal than Ashley Engle was last year.  We have two assistant captains in Michelle Kocher and Bailey Webster who is now injured.  Our chemistry is great and our leadership is great.  The team has bought in; they are willing to grow and they want to learn a lot about each other.  We're really pleased with the day-to-day performance in our gym. Again, there are a lot of new faces and our backcourt is completely new.  Juliann is the only one with experience back there, but it's Sydney's first time as a libero, you have Amber Roberson in there for the first time, you have Hannah Allison in there.  So there are a lot of new faces that are in that lineup and I thought we were playing really good defense leading up to Illinois.  We got a little bit stressed out, and we'll make those adjustments and learn as the game increases in speed.