University of Minnesota Athletics
Minnesota-Colorado State Postgame Quotes
12/12/2009 12:00:00 AM | Volleyball
#11 Minnesota (27-8) 3, #25 Colorado State (25-6) 1
Dec. 11, 2009 - Sports Pavilion - Minneapolis, Minn.
Opening statement...
"I thought the match was evenly played in the serve and pass game. Defensively I thought we were a little bit better and able to convert more often than they did. Very impressed with how well coached Colorado State is and they had a great plan for our attack, in particular, against Lauren Gibbemeyer. They held her to a fairly low percentage at hitting. We managed to find just enough cracks to get through. A lot of people have heard about Tabby Love, but I think tonight she came into her own. She had 22 kills and was our go to hitter all night long. This was probably her best performance as a Gopher. Real happy to be moving on."
Colorado State (1) 22, 27, 25, 18
Minnesota (3) 24, 29, 23, 25
Minnesota Head Coach Mike Hebert
On his teams defensive performance...
"I think we are a very good defensive team particularly in light of the relationship between block and defensive position. We work on that a lot and we are trying to get the opponents hitters to blast the ball where we want them to hit it. In doing that we place our defenders accordingly. We have managed for several years to have a good defensive team built around that principle."
On Colorado State's defensive plan...
"Colorado State did not want Gibbemeyer to hit, or be the reason they got beat. They double teamed and sometimes triple teamed her leaving (Taylor) Carico open to throw the ball down. I wasn't surprised at that. Several teams late in the season have done that against that. Colorado State did a particularly good job of getting their hands where they needed to be to slow down Gibbemeyer."
Minnesota Junior Lauren Gibbemeyer
On having a game at home...
"Obviously it's great to play in front of your own fans. With all of that support we had a great turnout tonight and we are so thankful to our fans. It is definitely a good advantage and we are expecting the same thing tomorrow night"
Minnesota Freshman Tabitha Love
On the performance tonight...
"Overall I thought we played really good tonight, our team, our chemistry. We felt like a team and I think that really gave us the edge against Colorado State."
Colorado State Head Coach Tom Hilbert
Opening Statement
"We have a great amount of respect for Minnesota and I think we got beaten by a very good volleyball team tonight. I feel like we competed well in the first three games and if you look at those games, to a certain degree we were in all of those. In fact, we probably did some things better than they did. But it came down to end game in games one and two. We didn't do in the last three or four points of the game and that becomes a very critical thing when you are competing at this level. We'd been doing a nice job with that but some bounces went the other way and on the road we weren't as comfortable."
On what gave Minnesota the edge
"We just didn't win those first two games. If we win one of those two, we take it to four or maybe even five games and we've won every five game match we've played this year. I felt great about the way we competed but I do believe Minnesota was a little better tonight."
On Minnesota's defense
"Their middle-backs were very disciplined. Danielle (Minch) gets a lot of kills off the "high hand" but their middle backs played deep and got a lot of those balls. That's probably because in the Big 10, you see attackers like that a lot. They were really good defensively."
Colorado Senior Tessa Nelson
"We've been playing in close games all season. We've played a lot of four and five game matches. It's something we're used to and a lot of times we come out on top in close games. Tonight we didn't finish at the end of games."
Colorado State Senior Katelin Batten
"This season has been the most fun of my time here. This team has been great and it's been fun, we've exceeded our expectations. I'm not bitter at all about our loss tonight, we lost to a really good team. It was a fun year. I'm ending my career in a game that was really fun."
